Small Business News

Free business counseling is available in central Pennsylvania through SCORE, "Counselors to America’s Small Business." This service is provided by more than 20 volunteers who have been in business and want to share their experiences. They represent a variety of business backgrounds. Some have worked for major companies such as Standard Steel, Cargill, Hershey Resorts and Alcoa. Others have owned successful small businesses locally. They counsel people who are thinking of going into business as well as those already in business who could use some help. In addition, SCORE works with the Small Business Development Center at Penn State to conduct half-day workshops regularly at no or minimal cost. A schedule can be found online at www.scorecpa.org. The site also provides the opportunity to apply for counseling.

Senator John McCain proposed on Friday that investors should be given a temporary reprieve from a rule forcing them to withdraw from their 401(k)’s and I.R.A.'s after the age of 70, so that they might be shielded from the devastating plunge of the stock market in recent weeks. The staggering decline in stocks has devastated the retirement holdings of many Americans, posing a particular threat to those nearing retirement age. Because investors over age 70 1/2 are required to begin withdrawing from their retirement accounts, they are being forced to sell their stocks at substantial losses. “We have to protect those who currently rely on their investments for retirement,” Mr. McCain said at a rally in La Crosse, Wis. “Current rules mandate that investors must begin to sell off their I.R.A.’s and 401(k)’s when they reach age 70 1/2. To spare investors from being forced to sell their stocks at just the time the market is hurting the most, those rules should be suspended.”

The Small Business Administration, assessing the government's success in awarding contracts to small businesses, said Wednesday that $83.2 billion went to those companies in the last fiscal year, a record amount. And it said that the government was close to complying with a law requiring that nearly a quarter of federal contracts go to small businesses. But critics quickly responded that the figures failed to reflect the full picture of federal contracting. They argued that small businesses were still not getting their fair share of government contracts. Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine and the ranking minority member of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, was among the critics.

As the economy falters, experts say small businesses must recognize runaway costs early and start making modest cuts. Back in 2002, Scott Chatel's business remodeling brownstones and apartments in Brooklyn and Manhattan was so good that he set a goal to increase annual sales from $2 million to $5 million by 2005. He signed a three-year lease and renovated new office space, expanded his staff, and printed four-color brochures. His firm, Chatel Contracting, was busier than ever, but the costs of expansion erased Chatel's profits, leading him to take on debt. "It was the overhead that was doing us in. The jobs were always profitable," Chatel says. By the end of his lease in 2005, Chatel dropped his expansion plans and went into cost-cutting mode.

Mary Gibson and Mary Grech started their small businesses with big dreams. Mary Gibson runs Gibson's Goodies, which makes homemade ice cream in Wilmington, Ohio. Both are looking for a president who will help mom-and-pop companies reach their goals, but their opinions differ on which candidate is best for the job. Gibson runs Gibson's Goodies, a small ice cream shop in Wilmington, Ohio, that's been around since World War II. She leans toward Barack Obama because "he is looking at the middle class a little more so." A 20-mile stretch of road decorated with more political signs than pumpkins stands between Gibson's Goodies and Francis Kennels. The kennel is housed in a large red building that looks like a barn and serves as a one-stop shop for grooming, boarding and obedience training. The thought of voting for Obama does not sit well with kennel owners Mary and Steve Grech. They are both voting for John McCain, but only by "process of elimination."