A local furniture store hosts two temporary businesses for a special shopping event, combining business-in-a-business and pop-ups to benefit everyone. Photo by Becky McCray.

By Deb Brown

The old way of doing business is one building, one business. What if you could test an idea and have a business inside a business?

Anyone of us either knows or can find someone who is making things from their home and selling it.

What if you encouraged already existing home-based businesses to host a trial popup in your store?

These small popups can be short term, over a season or if it works out a permanent addition. Perhaps you’ll let them try their idea out for free for a short time. If it works, you can determine together if they pay rent to you or a commission.

Who do you know that is a:

• Quilt maker
• Artist
• Artisan
• Painter
• Sculptor
• Widget maker
• Baker
• Crafter

Look for those that are doing business from their homes. Maybe they are just beginning to think about making some money with their products.

How can you help them, and your business at the same time?

Invite them to set up in a corner of your shop, as a pop up.

Then try these ideas:

• Meet the artist event
• Have a party announcing your new acquisition
• Create a Facebook event and do something special to announce their arrival

Why does all of this matter?

1. You will be bringing in new people to your store to meet these crafters. Cross promotion is good for business.
2. You’re giving a hand up and not a hand out to a new business person.
3. You’re enlivening your community using local resources.
4. You’re making your store a place where people come for an experience.
5. You’re building community and that strengthens the town for everyone.

More rural economic development tricks

Find out more rural economic development tricks in our latest SaveYour.Town video.

Your downtown is your core, your front door, your barometer. Photo by Deb Brown.

Why does downtown matter?

I’ve been asked why downtowns matter to small towns. Why should you invest your time and money into revitalizing your downtown? What makes it more important than any other area of town? What about that highway frontage? Or the edge of town where the discounters locate?

In our Survey of Rural Challenges, people ranked downtown as one of the top challenges, 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2021. It doesn’t matter whether you call it your Main Street, High Street or town centre, you’re not alone if it’s a challenge.

Joe Borgstrom with Place and Main said that your downtown is your front door, barometer, recruiting tool and collectively a large employer.

Don’t miss those last two: collectively, your downtown is both a recruiting tool and a large employer. Make sure downtown businesses have a seat at the table for economic and community development decisions.

Downtown matters because it represents your town as a whole. One mayor said downtown is like the core of an apple. No one wants a mushy core. 

If your downtown buildings are mostly boarded up windows or empty storefronts, that represents your town to everyone who drives through town. If your downtown is busy with lots of businesses, that represents you, too. And you have the power to change your downtown from empty and boarded up to busy and full of life.

Downtown is a symbol of the social connections we yearn for.

We have a drive to be better connected with other people. We want to belong to something. We want to be able to trust our community members. We want to be social. That’s easiest to imagine happening on downtown sidewalks and streets, not highway frontage or discounters on the edge of town.

Mangum Artists Alley photo courtesy of Travel OK

Small communities often are looking for ways to enhance and expand their local economies. A commonly used tool in this effort is encouraging the building and expansion of local businesses.

Communities want jobs and dollars, and they usually want them relatively quickly. Often development plans look towards high-fliers and/or large firms. Yet, the local business core consists of small businesses, often comprising more than 95 percent of all businesses that exist.

Four common categories of businesses are often defined as existing within a community:

• Family businesses
• Small businesses
• Large businesses
• Entrepreneurial businesses

Yet these categories are not mutually exclusive. There is a great deal of overlap in them.

Family businesses are simply a measure of who owns controlling interest in the business. Although not consistently defined in the industry literature, entrepreneurs generally are viewed as being innovative, planners, achievement-motivated and risk takers, which are perceived as factors in building high-growth firms.

Small-business owners show innovation and planning but are identified more by a focus on lifestyle and quality of life. The U.S. Small Business Administration defines them as a business having fewer than 500 employees.

These terms are used inconsistently. Plus, firms move between categories. Today, a small business can be a family business and an entrepreneurial business, but tomorrow that all can change. Gearing a strategy towards one segment can miss its strongest members. It may leave out those entering their fast growth stage while keeping those just exiting that stage.

I, along with a colleague, recently examined a mix of family businesses. We could identify, at any single point, firms that had more employees and higher revenues.

The interesting finding, which may be the most useful for community developers, is what happened to those firms as we entered the last recessionary period. The entrepreneurial firms showed significant drops in employees and income, while small businesses did not.

Small businesses then become crucial not only for the products and services they offer, but for keeping a community going. The latter is a role that is incredibly important by itself in building strong communities, but small businesses also offer economic balance.

As you think about the goals and the hurdles outlined, a suggested strategy might be to focus on a holistic business development effort that includes all business owners. It can help avoid the issues of definition, identification and time.

Building your community? Bring all your businesses to the table.