If your town can’t get its act together enough to accept help or seek opportunities, should outside groups spend any of their limited time and resources on you? Or should they focus instead on the places with the best prospects of success? When I first had this conversation with Joe Borgstrom a few years ago,…
If you’re a business owner, which appeals more: spending $20 to capture a new customer or spending $1 to retain an existing customer? These numbers represent broad averages but reflect reality, according to research. This means developing a sustainable business requires focusing first on building customer loyalty. Every business needs to build its customer base,…
Download file | Duration: 3:20| Size: 3.1M One of the most common questions I hear from small town businesses that make a product is about wholesaling. Should they sell at direct markets? Should they sell to retailers at a discount? If so, how do they ever afford it? So I asked Donna Maria from Indie Biz…
Guest Post by Leslie McLellan I’m building a destination marketing program for an area in Southern California – www.visitsanjacintovalley.com – and one of our niches is the snowbird market. The San Jacinto Valley is home to the largest RV park along the west coast –www.goldenvillagepalms.com – and they are the poster child for snowbird attraction. …
The world we live in is not a static place. This is true in every aspect of life, including small business. For small-business owners, things are changing, and those changes are happening at an ever-increasing pace. Doing business tomorrow will be different than doing business today. And doing business next week might be something we…
Guest Post by Anne Pyburn Craig It happened to cities and towns throughout industrialized America in the late and middle years of the 20th century. Big employers who’d propped up local economies for decades downsized or left, creating a brutal ripple effect on smaller businesses. Three towns in the Hudson Valley of New York…
Local food interest is creating opportunities across the country. This interest is evident when you examine the growth in the number of growers and farmers markets. It also is noticeable in the news and on social media, where you see and hear phrases such as “local foods,” “local producers,” “food hubs,” and “regional food systems,”…
Can something as mundane as a bike rack be art? Sure! Hey, if power and light poles can be art, anything is up for grabs! Norman, Oklahoma, is admittedly not a small town, with a population of over 110,000 and the home to a major university. But, I love their back racks. Any small…
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