It has been a long nine months of development, false starts and compromises, but thanks to our local web guru, Mark Yetto of Buffalo Web Services, LLC, we have a professionally developed site, which offers entrepreneurs better access to entrepreneurial services, local businesses access to online markets and a blog designed to help support an entrepreneurial mindset in Buffalo and Erie County.

• First, the site will be a platform from which MicroBiz Buffalo, Inc. (MBB) can share the stories of microentrepreneurs, and how, collectively, they are responsible for 50,000 businesses in Erie County alone. The Association for Enterprise Opportunity estimates 87% of all businesses nationally are microenterprises (About Microenterprise, 2009). Through the site’s blog, we will share national and international trends in small business and entrepreneurial development.
• Secondly, the website will facilitate the connection of prospective and existing entrepreneurs with the resources they need to be successful. Local resource providers will list their services on our site to reduce an entrepreneur’s need to visit multiple sites.
• Lastly, businesses need access to markets. Local first campaigns like Buffalo First are crucial to encourage consumers to buy local products. On the other hand, local economies struggle to grow without the regular infusion of capital from beyond their borders. Therefore, we have designed our website to be a platform for the online incubation of locally-owned businesses. Our multistore site will enable businesses to participate in the collective marketing opportunity our website engenders and to make sales online more cost effectively.

If you own a business and would like to start making sales online, go to MicroBiz Buffalo’s store and subscribe to use the site to begin making online sales.  We have limited space in our first workshop, so only the first 25 subscribing retailers will be given seating.  The workshop will get businesses up and running on the site.

Our first in a series of workshops will be November 19, 2009 (more details to follow).

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