Should I open a business here or somewhere else? Do I have potential customers in this market? I think I’d like to expand my company but is that a good idea?
Even if you are a seasoned small business owner, your ‘gut’ will only take you so far. Sometimes there’s no substitute for hard data.
A couple of weeks ago the U.S. Census Bureau introduced the Census Business Builder, which is a suite of services that you can customize to generate demographic and economic reports for geographic areas you’re interested in. The information is downloadable and printable.
Included are:
§ Small Business Edition
§ Regional Analyst Edition
The latter is a Beta version.
I’m still playing around with them but they are easy to use. You can set parameters by geography and demography which then display reports and an interactive map. For instance, if you are thinking about expanding your retail clothing store that specializes in children under 10, you can produce a report specifically for that. If you are a dentist catering to seniors, you can produce information about people over 65 in your area.
You can check them out by clicking on the links above.