One of the most admirable small business ventures - and I do mean small - that this blogger has ever seen was Toronto's very own Burrito Bike. If you lived downtown, you could call them up or Tweet out your location, and on any given Friday evening... delicious vegetarian burritos would trek through rain, sleet or snow by two wheeled power to arrive at your door, even the wee hours of the morn.
Sadly, such truly inspiring feats of human generosity were too good to last long in this unforgiving world. I am sad to report that Burrito Bike is no more. Its last bundle of joy (and beans and cheese) was delivered sometime in 2011 - though in its wake, a range of online-powered delivery services have emerged that use the power of data, rather than bikes, to get edibles to customers.
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Monday is Family Day here in Merchant Advance Capital's home province, and so we at the blog thought it would be an interesting occasion to reflect on some issues relevant to family-owned and run businesses across Canada. If you're taking the day to relax and be with whoever's closest to you - enjoy! If not, read on for some fascinating insights.
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Pardon Our Dust...
Merchant Advance Capital has come a long way from its humble beginnings in the home office of founder David Gens. For the past several years, our offices have been located at the beautiful and historic Fairview House: built in 1892, it ranks among Vancouver’s oldest standing buildings.
We’ve worked to serve the financial needs of small businesses across Canada from our Fairview abode, but the needs of the team as well as those of our customers are changing and growing. In light of this, we’re happy to announce that Merchant Advance Capital has moved to shiny new digs in the heart of Downtown Vancouver!
We are now located at 1500 W. Georgia St., where our team continues to offer the small business funding services and solutions that you've come to know us for. Though we’ll miss the history and charm of the Fairvew office, we are excited about the opportunities that lie ahead to be pursued from this new location. Here’s a first look inside the new space, where you can reach any member of our team from across Canada by calling 1 (877) 370-8850.
Surveys are wonderful tools. They can tell us a great deal about the world we live in and the way our businesses are viewed by the people we hope to connect with. There are many great metrics that can form the subject of an informative survey: satisfaction, customer experience, efficacy of design... but what about trust? What does it mean for a consumer to put their trust in a business?
According to a recent report by the PR firm Edelman, only 47 per cent of Canadian respondents said they "trust" business, down 15 percentage points from last year’s trust survey. This rather alarming statistic can be broken down into some interesting categories:
- Big business was the poorest-performing category in the trust survey, earning the faith of just 41 per cent of respondents.
- State-owned business are considered less trustworthy, at 45 per cent.
- Family-owned enterprises were surveyed as the most trust-worthy (79 per cent.)
That last point is particularly telling. Amid nightly newsworthy controversies ranging from tailings breaches to food contaminations to fraud to wage manipulation to explosions, consumers have grown increasingly cynical in their perceptions of big business activity. (A little self-deprecation: bloggers were ranked as some of the least trustworthy businesspeople around. Take that as you will!) However, smaller family-owned businesses outperformed the median in Edelman's trust survey by leaps and bounds.
Why could this be? Put simply: consumers are no longer impressed by the fact that products and services are simply functional or adequate. Evidence of a strong sense of investment in vibrant business culture and people-first practices have become the metrics by which businesses are evaluated and through which they gain trust among the community. The report accompanying the trust survey states:
The trust-building opportunity for business... lies squarely in the area of integrity and engagement. These areas encompass actions such as having ethical business functions, taking responsibility to address issues or crises, having transparent and open business practices, listening to customer needs and feedback, treating employees well, placing customers ahead of profit and communicating frequently on the state of the business.
Small businesses are uniquely equipped to succeed in each of these actions. Your small business has the ability for customers to get to know your business personally. You succeed by being seen as not only a provider of goods or services but rather a component of your market's local cultural identity.
This past Sunday evening was not just any Sunday evening: it was the 49th edition of that most quintessential of Sporting Events, the Super Bowl. An important disclaimer: I do not follow football. However, as many people often claim in jest, I do "watch it for the ads" - a practice made easier and easier by corporations' increased willingness to share content through social portals like Twitter and Youtube.
Super Bowl ads are perhaps just as famous for their cost as for their content. 30-second spots are sold for millions upon millions of dollars ($150,000 per second! Think on that!) to major corporations (such as perennial heavyweights Budweiser/AB-InBev) and highly ambitious smaller players, often web-based businesses looking to make a mark on huge audiences (as Wix, GrubHub and to some extent, humble adhesives manufacturer Loctite did this year.)
I won't use the space of this blog to break down a "winners and losers" spread of the 2015 ad spots - frankly, I believe that Katy Perry's team of dancing sharks stole the entire proceedings - but rather look at the lessons that may be applicable to small businesses.
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One of the key reasons many small businesses apply for loans or other forms of financing - including Merchant Advances - is to supplement their working capital. This value is critical in assessing the financial performance and stability of any business, and serves as a strong indicator of operational efficiencies. Read on to find out how working capital is measured and what implications it has for your business.
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In this week's look at Canadian economic events and trends, the Merchant Advance Capital blog examines one of the major themes making waves in Canadian economic forecasts: the sharply declining price of oil. Aside from its direct impact on the vast energy sector, the effect of oil prices on small businesses is not to be overlooked - ramifications both positive and negative may be felt at the local level by individual business owners as well as in the economy at large. Read on to find out more. (more…)
By the time you read this, it will be Monday morning. A new week brings a new set of challenges and experiences for any small business! Popular culture has embraced the stereotyped idea that the beginning of the week is where motivation can be at its lowest: it's wise to challenge this perception lest we fall into a pattern that takes a toll on productivity. Energy is a precious resource, and it drains more quickly than we think. The same way we go about maintaining hygiene or staving off hunger, we ought to regularly refill our motivational reserves as well. Here are three Monday motivation strategies that will help you declutter, focus, reinvigorate and be prepared for a smoother transition to the week ahead.
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Approaches to Improving Your Credit Score
Lines of credit are a significant resource for both individuals and businesses. They demand a high degree of financial responsibility: overuse of too many sources of credit can have a dramatic negative effect on your credit score. For those individuals who have reported credit scores on the lower side of the spectrum, recovery is often achieved through a mixture of careful oversight and management strategies focused spending consciousness and mindful repayment of existing debts.
Consistency is Key
There is one part of recovering and improving creditworthiness that does not seem quite so logical at first blush, especially if one's first instinct is to scale back on spending and focus on catching up to existing debts. Part of the rebuilding process actually involves maintaining lines of credit and continuing to use them - in a moderated, predictable way over time.
Credit experts recommend leaving old accounts open, to improve what is called the credit-utilization ratio - the ratio of debt to available credit. As long as small transactions are made on a periodic basis (just often enough to avoid stagnancy) the existence of these accounts may benefit you in the long run.
A Little Goes a Long Way
For any lines of credit that you continue to have available, it is recommended that your use of that credit be on the low side. Varying sources report that a maximum of anywhere from 35% to as low as 10% of the available credit from a given source should be used in order to help improve your credit score profile.
Stay on Target
In addition to using the right amount of your available credit and keeping it open as a resource, it is also of the utmost importance to make prompt and regular payments in order for your credit score to improve over time. Time, incidentally, is an important factor in the improvement of one's credit score: it may take longer to recover from more serious lapses in repayment.
Make Your Efforts Heard
It's great to make regular payments and keep your utilization ratio strong. However, the work you're doing to improve your score must be reported to a credit bureau by the issuers of the credit. Make sure that any credit sources you may use are in fact reporting to a bureau. There are different bureaus out there (including specific ones for business credit), so do your homework. With some dilligence, patience and care, your credit score will begin to rebound!
