My friend Cort Anderson has offered us this gift, some of what he is hearing in an agritourism workshop. The lessons are certainly useful for all types of tourism related business. Today was the first day of Agritourism: Your Next Cash Crop? a five day workshop put on by the Kansas Dept. of Commerce and…
The average age of US farmers is over 57.Photo by Becky McCray Here is a chance to double down in San Francisco on 24 January 2011. Two million young people—many of them from rural backgrounds—have served in the U.S. military since the attacks of 9/11. These veterans are facing extremely hard times, with very high…
Rural sourcing is like outsourcing, except to rural areas with lower costs of doing business. It’s like off-shoring, only it’s on-shoring. We’ve talked about it before, most recently in “Rural sourcing can replace outsourcing.” Two more rural outsourcing firms to watch: Saturn Systems celebrated 20 years in 2010. Rural America OnShore Outsourcing has a collection…
Every small town downtown has some unused buildings and others used just for storage. They aren’t adding anything to the downtown economy. What can you do with them, besides ignore them? Use the storefronts to advertise other businesses. Yes, it will take cooperative building owners. And this only works if the front windows are in…
Need some new small town tourism ideas? Borrow some. It’s the rural tradition: swipe from the best. The Rural Information Center at the USDA has links to tons of resources and ideas on rural tourism. It can take a while to figure out their menu structure, but trust me, there is great info linked from there. It…
[I’ve held on to this post since August, a bit concerned about being critical. I think these points are worth discussing, so I’ve finally decided to share it. -Becky] Lots about the Midwest Rural Assembly impressed me in a good way. But I found myself feeling the lack of two elements I consider critical in…
If you’re online for any length of time, you’re bound to get flamed. And in any group of people who are thinking about getting their small business or tourism destination online, there are always several who are seriously worried about being attacked online. I think this is a natural extension of our small town concerns….
Setting retail prices is like some arcane art form. How the heck are you supposed to figure out what to markup items in your retail business when no one wants to give you real numbers? Here are two starting points for setting retail prices and markups. Keystoning Keystone pricing is simple and fairly common….
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