My Dying Little Town

Here we sit planning a new business in our town and I just notice that all a round us other businesses are going out of business. In the last twelve months there has been at lease three major companies closed their doors including Palm Harbor Home who manufactured low cost prefab homes. Mac Tools have and slowed down their production. Our main street has many more unoccupied store fronts then occupied ones. So why! I ask you would I want to try to start a business in a town that looks like it is for lack of a better term dying.

Well I think that on a whole, little towns all across the country are going though the same type changes with business closing or moving off shore, and with gas going to four dollars a gallon people really can’t afford to live out here and drive to the city. I know we are paying almost 20% of every dollar my wife make just for her to drive to work and for some people it much higher. So again why should I try to start a woodworking business in my little town?

As I thought about this and I have giving it a lot of thought I came up with this, I believe that small business is what is going to drive any recovery we have in this economy especially for small towns like ours. I think it’s time that small towns like these needs to try to make it more attractive for small businesses to open up and do business in them. I also think its time to go back to living and working in the same community that you live. I know that’s one thing I think we lost and with it a sense of community. When business owners live in the same community that they do business they are more likely to be more involved in that community because it is also their home. Wouldn’t it be great to see pride in our towns come back and I’ m not talking about that few days a year like we now we do it now.

The how? now that’s the hard part. I have notice in several of the magazines’ I read, in their classifieds they have been posting for artist and crafts people wanting them to consider moving to their towns. They have come up with special finance on housing and studio space some towns have even purchased abandoned factories and convert them to workshops studios, and retail space. Some of these communities have attract some of the top artist in there fields and in turn they offer apprenticeships’ which attract people from all over the country, both to learn and shop for their wares. This has helped to open bed and breakfasts, campgrounds, restaurants, other small gifts shops, antique shops and a host of other small businesses that help to revive and energize a small town.

So this is just one example of how small businesses can revive a dying little town. It would take time, patients, money, talent, and above all faith. So do I think I will start a business in my dying little town, why yes, and who knows maybe I will be planting the seed of change or I could just fall on flat on butt and go broke. But I will never know unless I try, will I, so all I can do now is do my homework, save my money, plan the best I can, and go for it.