You’ve been hearing a lot about the need to keep your small town store open during the evenings. Your chamber of commerce is putting on more evening events. The new fitness place up the block is open late. Everyone seems to be trying to get people downtown during later hours, but when you’ve tried opening for…
One small town retail issue is dealing with customers who compare your prices to the prices with other far-away locations. A smart way to head that off is to create comparisons between different products within your store. Sometimes customers compare your price on a single item with that item in a different store or online….
From Upstate New York town to Global Marketplace: How we got our flags off the ground Guest Post by Mike Cronin My business, Gettysburg Flag Works, is a manufacturer of flags and flag-related items. Although we love our brick and mortar operation, we realized that we needed a digital presence in order to remain competitive….
Two business lessons from a local business: You have to be open to make the sale. Pay attention to the customer in front of you. My hometown Alva, Oklahoma, (population 6,200) holds a monthly first Friday Art Walk downtown. It’s primarily about fine arts displays, but a few businesses are starting to be open as…
Simply Made Apps is a tech start-up based out of Fargo, North Dakota, population 110,000. They reached out to us because although that’s not really a small town, it is definitely rural and remote. Co-founder Brandon Medenwald talked about what it’s like to run a high-tech business in an isolated small city, far from…
I realize that no one likes accounting, but I like WaveApps. I like that they focus on businesses with 9 or fewer employees, or no employees at all. I know that there are a lot of specialty apps out there, one for invoicing, one for receipts, something else for payroll. I don’t need the job…
Every week, I look for small town and rural business stories to share with you. I look for stories about shop local and the local movement, planning and development as relates to rural, rural news, community involvement, and ideas you can try in your town. Some of them end up as stories I share…
In general, towns are more or less the same. Streets, houses, trees. It’s the details that make one different. Sitting down for a meal in the restored Harvey House in Waynoka, Oklahoma. Watching the white-haired men lawn bowling at the seaside on the Isle of Skye, Scotland. Enjoying a scoop of juneberry ice cream in…
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