The results of the Chestermere Chamber of Commerce’s business survey were made public in a series of presentations at City Hall Feb. 1.
“One of the things we’ve always suspected is that a shop local program needs to be a greater focus for us if we want to change things,” said Chestermere Chamber of Commerce Vice-President Robin Impey.
The key issues for business growth in Chestermere identified by the survey are: managing growth of the City, the lack of local shopping, overhead costs for businesses, andcustomer acquisition and retention.
The survey showed that in addition to a shop local program, that business owners want to see more diversity of businesses in Chestermere and continued community growth to sustain local businesses.
Impey said that the chamber wasn’t surprised by the results of the survey.
“I would say most of it is what we had expected,” he said, “we’re a small business community we talk often with the same business owners that did the survey so we’ve already heard it, but this reinforced what we believed was probably true.”
He was surprised at the good response from home based businesses in Chestermere.
Done in partnership with the city, the survey saw responses from about 39 per cent of Chestermere’s registered business community.
The responses were a near 50-50 split between home based and commercial businesses.
“It was really good to work with the city jointly to do this because it spreads the cost and the energy taken,” said Impey.
The partnership has shown Impey that the city is ready to partner with the chamber to grow the local business community.
“The city…is very open to working with the chamber on some of our new initiatives and sharing the workload to make the business community stronger,” said Impey.
Despite the challenges, he said that the business community has, overall, a high satisfaction with Chestermere as a place to do business and are optimistic about the future.
“2018 is going to be a good year,” said Impey.
The full results will be posted to the chambers website at www.chestermerechamber.com.
