Small Business Standouts To Be Honored
Friday, September 27, 2013 @ 4:11 AM
Prince George, B.C. – The small business community in B.C. is about to receive some recognition from the provincial government. The Premier’s office says small businesses that stand out in their local communities will have an opportunity to be rewarded for the work they do every day.
The new Premier’s People’s Choice Award, one of nine Small Business BC Awards, will acknowledge a business which demonstrates that their community thinks they go above and beyond. After being nominated, small businesses must use imaginative, creative or traditional methods to get customers, clients and neighbours to vote online between Oct. 1 and Nov. 30, 2013. The B.C. business with the most votes from their community will not only win the award but will also receive formal recognition from the Premier at an award ceremony in February 2014.
Nominees must employ fewer than 50 people and currently own a business in British Columbia. Small Business BC Award winners, including the first winner of the Premier’s People’s Choice Award, will each receive the Premier’s Prize of $1,500 cash, a one-year all-access pass to Small Business BC education and experts, as well as business mentorship opportunities.
This year marks the 11th annual Small Business BC Awards, previously known as the Successful You Awards. Since its inception in 2003, Small Business BC has encouraged more than 2,200 entrepreneurs to participate in this province-wide awards competition from areas as diverse as retail, trade, manufacturing, technology services, arts, entertainment and recreation.
In B.C., small business is defined as a business with fewer than 50 employees, or self-employed without paid help. Small business provides nearly 55 per cent of private-sector jobs, employing over one million people in B.C. In addition, the province’s small business community contributes 26 per cent of the province’s Gross Domestic Product.
Comments
I looked this up to see if i should nominate some of our local businesses. What a silly awards program. To even qualify, a business has to solicit nominations and votes from their clients and customers. This usually amounts to a popularity contest, not based on merit. That’s just to qualify. Then you have to write your own application, including things like financial statements. If you make it past that stage, you have to prepare a pitch presentation and travel to Vancouver to deliver to a panel of judges. The grand prize for all of this? A year of free seminars and ‘ask the expert’ services from Small Business BC. It sounds like a lot of hoop jumping just to promote the services of Small Business BC.
I agree with you. This is a lot of screwing around to get little recognition for running a small business in B.C. . The real small business owners are too busy looking after there clients, customers and government red tape to bother with this type of government hype.
Ultimately the real recognition to small business is the local customer base and loyalty of clients, this is built on competitive pricing, product support and real customer service which is a dying art in this day and age. You only survive in business by proving what you don’t find in the big box stores, customer service and good product pricing and knowledgeable staff who look after the customer from start to finish.
Several downtown stores could stand to pull up there socks and improve there bottom line by actually being competitive with the big stores. It can be done if they only get away from the mentality of soaking the local consumer on one or two purchases. You make money over time by volume and consistency, not by soaking a customer and then providing little or no product support post purchase. There are places I wont purchase from just because there pricing is out in left field (way out there) and the staff just don’t have a clue what they are selling (nor do they seem to care…..it’s a pity).
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