Several smaller family owned businesses now are hurting because of the current recession. A lot of these family run companies have been running for many generations and have not anything about their way of doing business in all of those years. Now that the economy has taken a turn for the worse, several of these mom and pop style businesses are scared of going out of business for the first time.

This article will discuss ways that these smaller businesses can maybe think outside of the box and use some other options to make up for some of the loss their business have experienced during the recession. One example is a local vacuum pump repair shop that was started decades ago by the owners father. They specialized in fixing vacuums and vacuum pump parts and had always had steady business. They continued to operate the old school way way with a cash register and paperwork and receipts. Advertising for their repair shop was solely based on recommendations from clients and word of mouth. For all of this time that had worked just great. Now, their business is having a hard time and the owner is scared of losing the business. The the entire business plan for their shop was “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Well, now it needs some fixing and they do not know what to do.

The most important thing for businesses such as the one highlighted above is to become as up to date as the business owner who is just opening a shop this month. Several family run businesses are like the one above, not using computers and no advertising. Times have changed and competition is fiercer than ever. The shop should first get a business computer system installed that will assist them to be on top of everything. The next step to do is to look into starting a website that can reach a wider customer base.

Many companies these days have a website, whether it is just purely informational with the location and products and store hours displayed or they want to try to sell to the whole world wide web. The yellow pages are becoming extinct as now people to choose to google whatever they need to research. If the small family business does not have a website, then they will lose business to the shop that does have a website in the similar community. The difference in having a website rather than not could makeup the difference in the percentage of sales lost during this recession.

These smaller businesses should research someone that is quite knowledgeable in computers and website design and start ups to assist them in beginning this new venture. There are businesses that do just that and can be found on the internet. Taking a risk and changing a business model that probably was started by your grandfather can be intimidating and scary at first, but it worth the chance and time to update your way of doing business through the internet.

Chuck R. Stewart recently purchased a vacuum pump repair kit online for a very old machine he was trying to fix. He eventually will have to replace the vacuum pump altogether.

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