Here are a few interesting blogs and online articles published this week that relate to Rural Small Business, ending January 24, 2009:
The U.S. House passed an $819 billion stimulus plan this week, part of the economic stabilization plan to restart the US economy. The New Mexico Business Weekly analyzes the Stimulus package from a small business point of view. The proposed bill includes incentives to hire veterans and eight other targeted groups.
A blog maintained by the University of Illinois Extension, The Farm Gate - Where Farm Decision-Makers Start Their Day, provides a great summary of where rural America might expect to see funds allocated. Farm Gate states that “$100 million will be appropriated to spur $2 billion in loans and grants to rural businesses which have been hampered with tight credit,” and that the stimulus bill has allocated $2.8 billion for loans and grants to expand broadband Internet service to rural areas.
More than $27 billion will be allotted to food and agriculture, but 78% of those funds are for nutrition programs, including food stamps. Conservation projects in rural areas that include watershed, dams and floodplains are included in other parts of the stimulus package. Read more at The Farm Gate.
Looking at my posts, it’s been a decidedly political week here for me on Backroads Business, too. You can take a look at the President’s Agenda for Rural Business, as well as my take on how reducing postal mail delivery to five days of the week may affect rural small business owners. And if you want a totally different perspective from what you hear in your own community, visit this newspaper in Great Britain and you’ll be assured we’re not alone.
What does rural America have left to lose in this recession, when we’ve already lost so much? Quite a lot, if you read this article which focuses on North Carolina. But odds are you’ll see your own rural area in almost every sentence and statistic.
The Morris SunTribune in Morris, Minnesota provides thoughtful commentary on Congressional health care reform discussions and the effect on Rural America. Since the rural economy depends more on small business and self employment than urban areas, health care legislation should pay particular attention to the challenges of obtaining insurance coverage in rural areas. Rural Americans are more often under-insured and more dependent on the individual insurance market. This forces them to often pay more for less coverage, and can force small businesses to drop health coverage for their employees and themselves.
On a subject near and dear to many of us in rural America, I found a great article this week entitled “Organic Food – Why we grow it, sell it, and eat it, and how it can help save our world,“ written by Dave Ring, owner of a small business himself (an organic food store).
Here’s how organic agriculture can improve a local economy:
“From an economic standpoint, local farmers get a higher share of the consumer’s money spent on food. This means that money is recirculated locally and not removed from the community. Because the food is local, there is less transportation time to get the food to market and this means less cost and fresher food for consumers.
Probably the biggest impact local organic farming can have on a community is the creation of jobs. Organic farming can be more labor intensive, so job creation is part of the process of building a local sustainable food system. Local organic farming is probably one of the best business models when it comes to building strong middle class independent businesses. These are the types of businesses that help grow and sustain a community.”
Read much more here.
You can read a one-page summary of President Obama’s’ agenda for Rural America now posted on the White House website. The agenda addresses three areas: economic opportunities for family farmers, rural economic development and rural quality of life.
“Rural communities face numerous challenges but also economic opportunities unlike anything we have witnessed in modern history. President Obama and Vice President Biden believe that together we can ensure a bright future for rural America. They will help family famers and rural small businesses find profitability in the marketplace and success in the global economy.”
Leading with the need to ensure economic opportunity for family farmers, the Rural Agenda addresses the need to support family farms, preserve private lands, and promote local and organic agriculture.
To foster rural economic development, the plan includes capital to create value-added products as well as cooperative marketing, small business, and micro-enterprise initiatives. Building rural connectivity for phone service that promotes affordable broadband has been in the news over the last week. Upgrades in rural infrastructure - roads, bridges, water systems and air access - are also stated goals.
Rural small businesses may be affected by postal delivery changes in the future.
The Postmaster General told Congress today that massive deficits could force the post office to eliminate one day of mail delivery each week. The most likely day to be skipped is Tuesday, which is apparently the lightest mail day.
The Post Office delivered 202 billion items last year, 9 billion less than in 2007. The Postmaster General says, “A revolution in the way people communicate has structurally changed the way America uses the mail.” More people now use email and the Internet for personal communication, paying bills or viewing business statements online, and business correspondence. Junk mail filled in for a while, and allowed the Post Office to make more money, but the economy has even negatively affected junk mail. I knew we’d find a pony in this economic mess somewhere.
Once again, rural communities will be disproportionately affected. According to a Pew Research poll, half of all adult Americans who live in non-rural areas can get online with a fast internet connection at home or work. But only about one third of rural Americans can. Rural Americans who rely on traditional mail delivery will be at a disadvantage.
But many rural areas across the country don’t get postal delivery on a daily basis even now. Local adaptation to the uniqueness of each geographical community has always been allowed. When we moved to the mountains 19 years ago, the local post offices were closed on Wednesday afternoons and Saturday mornings. But with broadband limited in many rural areas, traditional mail delivery is still something we depend on.
Dan G. Blair, chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission, suggested in his testimony that Congress review both delivery and restrictions it imposed on the closing of small and rural post offices. So postal delivery is not the only area of mail operations being evaluated, and odds are not the only change to be made.
Obviously, many questions will have to be answered as to how rural small business owners might be affected by these changes. Sales taxes, income taxes, and payroll all have to be filed or postmarked by certain dates. Small business owners will need to plan differently and plan ahead, or close our businesses to allow us to make trips down to the Post Office. We don’t even have a mail drop-off point in our part of the county anymore. If you want to mail something and don’t have it ready for your mail carrier, you have to bring it directly to the Post Office.
Many rural small businesses use US Postal Priority Mail for shipping (rather than UPS or FedEx) because the post office doesn’t charge a pick-up fee for packages and even provides free boxes, tape and labels. We use Postal Priority Mail for customer orders whenever possible, because having our mail carrier pick up our packages daily when he delivers our mail, saves us forty minutes each day. That time savings adds up for a small business owner, and we don’t miss making the round trip downtown every day.
I wonder what the effect on our business will be if we can’t ship orders every day of the week…unless we close our retail shop to walk-in customers and drive our web customer packages downtown. This is not a small issue for us because we are fortunate to ship several hundred orders a month. We may be located in a rural area, but we ship our handmade craft worldwide.
With one postal price increase just put into effect last week, and another one due again in May, I have to wonder how long ‘free’ postal priority mail pickup service for rural small businesses wil be provided.
How can you draw more visitors to your business when you’re in a remote rural location?
Increase your pulling power. Join with other similar rural businesses and promote yourselves as a group. Instead of just one rural business located ‘way out in nowhere,’ you can become a destination worthy of a planned day trip.
Collaborative Marketing is working together with others to sell what you make. It’s a concept that farmers have traditionally used more than artists and crafts artisans. But wherever there is common ground - a common market or a common product - there is an opportunity to achieve more together.
My area of western North Carolina is known for handmade arts and crafts, and it’s not surprising that some of our best artisans have linked together to attract visitors to their out-of-the-way rural locations. Two groups of potters have agreed to work together to market the the crafts they produce, and organized themselves by their geographical locations. Some of the studios represent the work of one artist, while other studios showcase multiple artists. With so many studios geographically close to one another, it becomes quite natural to market them as a group. And it also makes it easy for visitors who love handcrafted pottery of all kinds to see all the studios while enjoying the beautiful mountain landscape.
Each of the groups has created a website with a detailed map that lists all the artists and their studio locations, along with photographic samples of each artist’s work and links to their individual websites. Print brochures with the same information are available and waiting to be discovered by those visitors already in our area and looking for interesting things to do. Attractive and consistent signage at each studio location allows visitors to casually - but confidently - meander their way through the curvy mountain roads.
Here are links to each group for you to take a look at their collaborative marketing efforts:
Potters of the Roan is a guild of emerging and professional potters living and working in the Appalachian mountains of Western North Carolina.
The Penland Potters is a group of seven clay studios located within a three mile radius of the Penland School of Crafts in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina.
Are you ready to make this kind of shift in your thinking, and include some type of collaborative marketing in your promotional arsenal? It’s a tough question but one you must think about thoroughly before you join together with others. You are still an independent business, but interdependent in some ways. Finding businesses that share common ground is the first step, and then you can organize your marketing efforts around a common theme.
Would collaborative marketing work for your rural business?
