Merchant Advisor: Pan Am Games a Small Business Boon

Summer is in full swing, and the attention of many Canadians - as well as viewers and visitors from around the world - is turned to Toronto for the Pan Am Games and Parapan Games, which run from the 10th until the 26th of July. As the Games’ sporting spectacle unfolds, it also offers a chance to observe another kind of performance - one in which businesses large and small compete to find advantages, adapt to challenges and pursue new heights in a market environment suddenly and invitingly open to a burst of activity from both domestic and global spectators.

While direct sponsorship of major events like the Games is generally the domain of very large, multinational-scale business interests with the budgets to match (including sponsors like Chevrolet, Cisco and Live Nation), businesses local to the Toronto area and in Canada at large will also compete fiercely for their brands to be represented on the world stage through procurements and contracts in areas ranging from legal services to sponsorship sales, printing, translation, employee recruitment, public relations and more.
Major events can pay off for small businesses in an unofficial capacity as well - often related to an overall boost in consumer activity driven by the desire to visit and participate in something unique. The Games’ relatively short and predefined period of increased consumer traffic has already had significant benefits for Toronto’s accommodations and restaurant sectors, according to a recently released report from Moneris. The report found that overall, consumer spending during the Games’ opening weekend rose 8.42 per cent from the same weekend in 2014.
For your small business to perform like a gold-medallist, you need to take advantage of being able to prepare well in advance when a major event takes place in your area. Athletes take pride in being the sporting ambassadors for their nations: by the same token, how will your business showcase its own array of talents to the world? Whether this means taking on extra inventory to cope with projected increases in demand, developing an ingenious marketing campaign that will get visitors buzzing, or rerouting your logistics around a jump in traffic congestion, a large-scale event allows for the investigation of rare opportunities to try new ideas and optimize business success.