It’s worse than we thought!

I read in the Herald Sun today (Wednesday 8th August 2013) , that an “Average 44 Small Businesses closing their doors each day, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics data”.

That’s 2 per hour, or if we assume they can only close during the business hours of 9am-5pm (fair enough), that’s 5.5 businesses closing their doors every single hour, or 1 every 11 mins.  So while you sneak 10 minutes for lunch today, one of your fellow struggling business owners will be shutting their doors for the last time.  And by 5pm tonight there will be another 44 businesses gone forever.

Now let’s talk about what’s NOT being said…

Even though right across Australia people are talking about job cuts and company wide losses, the total number of small businesses in this country is continuing to climb.  This increase in competition at a time of reduced spending, cheap imports and online purchases, is putting a huge strain on the already existing businesses, as new start-ups attempt to gain grown.

Aiding these new businesses is modern technology, fresh approaches to marketing, ultra cheap outsourcing and the almost unstoppable passion of starting a new venture – do you remember your first day.  That means existing businesses have now got more competition than yesterday and will have even more tomorrow.

This ‘global recession’ will leave the last ones standing being the victors.  ‘Local company, global presence’ means only the smart marketers will survive, the ones who care more about their customers than their profit dollar.  Customer loyalty and word-of-mouth will be the draw cards in this brave new world.

Who will survive?

Written by: Ross Pepper.