Tag | StatsCan

Small Business Statistics in British Columbia

Jan 24th, 20111 Comment

A number of months back, I was researching some statistics of small business in British Columbia.

I came across a very helpful email from Gary at Small Business BC, and I’ll share some of what he shared below.

Have a look at the Small Business Profile Study by BCSTATS:
http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/data/bus_stat/busind/sm_bus.asp
It states that in 2007-2008 there were 384,300 small businesses in BC.  58.3% of those were in the Mainland/Southwest region of BC.

City of Vancouver Statistics are harder to find.
Try:
http://www.metrovancouver.org/about/statistics/Pages/KeyFacts.aspx (for the GVRD)
You may try asking at the City of Vancouver (although I don’t know if they compile that info). You can find the number of business licenses issued at the metrovancouver site..but not by size of business.

You can also try Statistics Canada:
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/reference/refcentre-centreref/index-eng.htm
or BCSTATS:
http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/ds_email.asp
Small Business BC does not define what a small business is. We use the Provincial Government definition of any business with fewer than 50 employees. I don’t believe I have ever seen a definition of a "medium" sized business. It is either "Small" (50 or under employees) or "Small and Medium" (50 and under employees..same as "small") and "Large" (over 50 employees)

, , , Small Business

Rising Tide of Internet Sales

Sep 28th, 2010No Comments

It’s not breaking news that more and more transactions are being conducted online, but StatsCan just came out with a report entitled E-commerce: Shopping on the Internet that reports a surge from $12.8 billion of online shopping sales in 2007, to $15.1 billion in 2009.

Value of online orders

There are a growing number of business owners like Baseer Khudayar, who has two brick and mortar shoe store locations, who are taking advantage of being online and having a virtual storefront that has few limits.

While a business owner can’t really do too much to drive more foot traffic to an actual location (Do the Little Caesar’s Pizza sign holders on street corners really work?!? All to come in to buy a $5pizza? It must work …). Pizza aside, there are thousands of folks sitting in front of their computers who are LOOKING to buy shoes!

So the question is, whether it’s shoes or some other product(s) or service(s), what are you doing to be found by the increasing number of people who are searching for what you offer online?

A little bit of investigation and time on your part can pay off in spades. Or, more importantly, dollars.

 

E-Commerce