Donald
Teuma-Castelletti
FORT COULONGE
Jan. 11, 2018
A survey commissioned by the SADC Pontiac revealed that many local, small business owners have no plan in place for their store’s survival past the next five years, but the organization is looking to fix that.
This finding came alongside many more gleanings at an event to share the results of the survey last Thursday evening at the Pontiac Conference Centre.
Marc Di Gaspero, a director with Zins Beauchesne et associés, the firm in charge of collecting and organizing the data, pointed to this lack of a retirement plan for entrepreneurs as a worrying factor for unique stores found throughout the area.

“Something should be done to help these people,” said Di Gaspero. “If you don’t want to lose them all, make sure these people don’t close their businesses without a plan [in place].”
Of course, that’s why this survey was conducted in the first place – to see how SADC Pontiac needs to accommodate their local businesses.
“This coming week we’re offering training on business transfer,” said Rhonda Perry, the director general for the SADC Pontiac.
Perry said that the fact the area has so many aging entrepreneurs has become clear, but that they’re working hard to adjust for this.
She also said that it’s not as easy as simply selling off a business to an owner, as beyond the attempt to price a business there’s the emotional and psychological connections to it, too.
In response to this finding, SADC Pontiac has announced a new fund to assist with planning ahead for businesses that don’t have a plan of transfer. The details for this will become clearer at a training session on Jan. 18, alongside the education for transferring farms.
More opportunities to learn how to transfer business in different sectors, from retail through to financial and mechanics, will be planned, as well as ways to integrate younger generations into these longstanding operations.
Other interesting takeaways from the survey included that nearly 60 per cent of survey respondents said that they founded – either on their own or with business partners – the operation they are currently running; that 17.1 per cent of businesses said slow demand was their biggest challenge at the moment; and that 37.3 per cent of businesses plan to make major investments in the next three years.
Of the 715 businesses in the survey area, 645 were narrowed down to be eligible for the survey, as they were not a part of a larger corporation. Of the eligible businesses, 244 were surveyed between May 19 and July 3, 2017.
This resulted in a response rate of 37.8 per cent, which Di Gasperno considered to be a great sample of the population.
“This is a very strong response rate,” said Di Gaspero. “You can trust that [the results] are valid, I’m very confident because of this.”
A mean age of 54-years-old was recorded and just under 55 per cent of the interview subjects were male. The mean age of the businesses surveyed were found to be 28.8-years-old.
SADC Pontiac plans to use this data into the future in order to continue providing their services to local businesses.
“What we needed to know was where we’re at,” said Perry. “That’s what this data gave us.”