Steve Mensing, Editor/U.S. Small Business Association (SBA)
♦ So you are considering starting a business or a restaurant in Downtown Salisbury, N.C.? Maybe its your life-long dream to start a business or a restaurant somewhere? Really think any business or restaurant through before you make the “plunge”. It’s easy to be sold a worthless bill of goods or run into small city “hard sell”. This is especially true if a downtown business district is desperate for warm bodies. If you are a business rookie or starting a restaurant, pitching a tent in Downtown Salisbury may be ill-advised.
TIPS ON STARTING A BUSINESS OR RESTAURANT IN DOWNTOWN SALISBURY, N.C.
• Is there a realistic need for your type of business or restaurant? Sometimes it’s difficult for newbies starting out to get past their passionate “life long dream” or “hobby” and remove their rose colored glasses long enough to notice the local reality. Unquestionably Downtown Salisbury, N.C. is swarming with U-boats prepared to send torpedo after torpedo into your pipedreams. So is there a realistic need for your goods and services? This question is HUGE. Downtown Salisbury is awash with vacant and padlocked businesses and restaurants that never thought about this very primary question.
• Do you have a professionally drawn business plan for your “dream of a lifetime”? Have you run your business plan by experts at your SBA office? These folks are business people who know the ropes and can assist you in moving forward or scuttling the big ship before it goes down in very troubled waters.
• Are you an out-of-towner with a big X painted on your back? Someone who knows very little about the shark infested waters of vacancy strewn Main Street in Salisbury? Are you actually aware of the rates at which businesses and restaurants close Downtown? Have you actually come to Salisbury and carefully scouted out the lack of pedestrian and vehicular traffic in the Downtown area most hours of the week day or the fact that few warm bodies enter many of the stores and restaurants? This is a very important observation to make. You wouldn’t want to be one of those hapless victims who jet in for a day and are escorted around downtown by a hungry merchants looking for another warm body?
We hope you were not a chump paraded around on a Friday Night Out and given the joyous bums rush by local merchants desperately trying to recruit fresh meat to join their thinning numbers. Friday Night Out is an illusion of false vibrancy and it has been the bait for many unfortunates with swollen pipedreams. And have THEY gone a step further with you and invited you out to lunch and dinner? Smothered you with false attention and told you how you would fit in? Have you ever been loved bombed by a cult or have your neediness stroked for someone else’s gain? Then you might recognize the experience. Remember your life savings and big dreams are at stake here. Is Downtown Salisbury really the place?
• Have you checked out the local FBI crime statistics? The spendable income, the average per capita income (U.S. Census), the 25% poverty rate? The grades of the local public schools? Is Salisbury a community on the way up…or skidding to the edge of a cliff? How about the immense Downtown Municipal Taxes? The city codes and the historic codes are often arbitrary and very expensive to fulfill. The reputation of the municipal government? Salisbury’s city services haven’t been the same since Fibrant debacled out in 2011 and started pigging up millions from the water and sewer utilities.
Make a point to visit your SBA and draw up a rigorous business plan for starters. Get their valuable mentoring. Many mistakes are avoidable.
Check out Salisbury’s statistics:
http://rowanfreepress.com/salisbury-nc-statistics/
A Photo Safari through Vacancy Strewn Downtown Salisbury:
