Local businesses look for new ways to grow as retail industry takes hit

Despite historic lows in Columbia’s sales tax revenue, local business experts said that hasn’t discouraged small business owners from starting new stores and companies.

Collin Bunch, entrepreneurship coordinator with the Regional Economic Development Inc., has been working with potential small business owners for years. He used to work with Columbia’s branch of the Missouri Small Business and Technology Development Center.

He said that some days, he would meet with seven or eight potential new owners and helped get them on the right track.

“It’s in no one’s interest for a business to fail,” he said. “Overall, Columbia has been picking up. People are starting new things, doing new things.”

To start a new business in Columbia, there are a several steps a potential owner has to take, but Bunch said it’s the standard process across the state. For one, they have to pay a few hundred dollars in fees. Bunch said those fees are a one-time deal and won’t come back again.

There’s also more to starting a business than just getting a business or liquor license. Bunch recommends registering online as a limited liability company, or LLC. Then, there’s tax numbers to get and employee forms to fill out.

If a potential owner nails down all the requirements and fills out all the forms, they could be official in less than a month.

“If they’re really driven and they have a couple hundred bucks, they can do it in a day,” said Bunch. “Except the business license could take a week or two.”

Potential owners also must have their space ready for inspection before they can receive their business license, something Bunch said can sometimes be a barrier to starting if they don’t know about the sequence.

Other barriers could be rent.

“It might not be the form that they do but some of the other market forces,” said Bunch. “It’s a lot more expensive downtown now, utilities, all those other things that make it hard and limit your way to get a physical store.”

SBTDC and other organizations like the Women’s Business Center are on hand to help potential owners through the process free of charge but Bunch said that doesn’t always mean they’ll be successful. Sometimes outside forces can cause a business to fail.

For instance, enrollment at Mizzou is down and the retail market isn’t what it used to be.

“Retail in general is taking a hit right now,” said Bunch. “You might have done everything right and still failed because of timing.”

To offset that, Bunch said they’re helping new and old businesses in Columbia find new ways to make a profit that isn’t necessarily capture in the sales tax.

“Maybe their clients aren’t here in town or they don’t have a physical product because services don’t get taxed in Missouri,” he said. “Sometimes it’s helping those downtown retailers sell things online or find other channels.”

ABC17 News requested how many business licenses have been requested and granted each year for the past decade to find out if Columbia is really seeing more or fewer businesses.

Here is a link to the city’s page for business licenses.