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Main Street Revitalization in Beattyville (3 of 12) Posted: April 30, 2002 Get Ready, Company is Coming! Third of twelve articles first published in the "Three Forks Tradition" newspaper By: Larrey Riddle Redefining Main Street Norman Rockwell’s portraits of a slow-paced, more innocent time defined our image of small towns in the fifties. Mom and Pop shops, where every customer was a neighbor, set the standard. Small town America, in all its innocence, never looked so good. Shop owners lived above the store and made a good living. You never saw a “Going Out of Business” sign in a Rockwell painting. Now, think about what was really happening in the period when Rockwell was in his heyday. America was rapidly becoming an urban society. Our own mountains, like rural areas everywhere, were emptying as people moved to Detroit and Chicago and Dayton for jobs that did not exist at home. According to Small Business Economics by W.A. Brock and D.S. Evans the period of 1958 to 1980 found that companies employing less than 500 people experienced a continual decrease in revenues that did not begin to turn around until the late 1970’s. It has never been easy to run a small business. It takes a combination of hard work, luck, uncanny insight into customers’ needs, and more hard work. Today, small town retail businesses face pressures unimaginable just a generation ago. Discount superstores, catalog and Internet sales, and dips in the economy make running a viable business a challenge of unparalleled proportions. Yet, a viable Main Street is comprised of robust retail businesses. The process of revitalizing our Main Street must include providing resources businesses need to thrive and succeed. Fortunately, there are some very good resources available both locally and on the Internet for advice on every aspect of running a retail business. Here are some of my favorite Internet sites: www.business.com This a good site for business research. It is very well organized and you can customize the site to your own industry or product lines. www.smallbusiness.com The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) has linked with this site to offer a free peer-to-peer network for exchanging ideas and advice. www.isquare.com This site offers tips and wisdom about dealing with suppliers. www.gatton.uky.edu/rboc/ce/ce.html The University Of Kentucky’s “Center for Entrepreneurship” provides technical support for new and expanding businesses. https://www.ksbdc.org The Kentucky Small Business Development Centers provide the Commonwealth of Kentucky's entrepreneurs and small businesses with the high quality one-on-one management consulting, educational training, and business information they need to maximize their growth in today's intensely competitive global economy. www.smalltownmarketing.com/ This site specializing in small town retail businesses, offers money-saving marketing, advertising and promotional ideas. It has more than 300 Web pages of tips for small business success. This is a great site. www.score.org The Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE) offers free tips, resources and expert how-to articles and profiles of small business owners who are achieving success with help from SCORE. Their “Get Email Counseling” lets you access advice electronically. Retired and active business owners and executives generally answer questions sent to them within 48 hours. Their real-world experience is an excellent resource. Last week twenty people met to talk about the future of Beattyville’s downtown business district. They discussed the need for sprucing up the downtown and the resources that are available from Frankfort and beyond. The Kentucky Renaissance program offers an excellent path for doing just that. In order to get started with that program, we need your help. The next meeting of this group will be February 7th, at 7:00 p.m. at the fire station. Every business in town should be there. A vital downtown is made up of healthy businesses. This group can help achieve both. |
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