New York SBDC Research Network

To echo Roger's post earlier this week, I wanted to mention that the Consumer Product Safety Commission recently released a handbook meant for owners of resale and used merchandise stores. It was written in response to the recent passing of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (which Amelia wrote about here last February). According to the CPSC, it was created to help sellers of used products understand the new law and existing regulations. In their words, "[t]he purpose of this Handbook is to help you to identify the types of products that are affected and to understand how to comply with the law, so you can keep unsafe products out of the hands of consumers." It's only 28 pages long. If you have clients in this industry, it's best if they read this.

It has been a few weeks since I've stimulated you with stimulating information about the stimulus, so today is your lucky day. Of course, there is so much new information coming out everyday from the SBA, local and national business publications, and government websites that it would be impossible for me to keep you constantly updated. The information below is what I believe is most valuable to you, the business owner or advisor. As always, please feel free to comment with links to information you would like to share on the stimulus and small businesses. Q&A: New SBA Administrator Karen Mills on the Stimulus Small Business Administration - America's Recovery Capital Loan Program Stimulus gives SBA Loans a Boost Sign Up for Updates from the New York State Recovery Website Interest Groups, Legislators Call for Transparency on Stimulus Money

I guess we can look forward to the release of Bing, Microsoft's new search engine due out June 3rd. Everywhere I look today there is more speculation about Bing. This is meant to be a response to the shortcomings of web search and competition for Google, the lion of the search market. Microsoft is describing Bing as a "decision engine" apparently well suited to comparisons. The reviews I've read are saying good things about it, even that it is giving Google a run for it's money by helping searchers distill information, pulling it together in the search screen. In a couple of days you can decide for yourself whether it really is an alternative to Google or Yahoo! You can check out the teaser site here .

Here's an unsurprising bit of info from the U.S. Census Bureau Used merchandise stores employed more than 131,000 people with $2.1 billion in annual payroll and nearly $9.3 billion in sales in 2007, according to new economic census data released by the U.S. Census Bureau. As part of the 2007 Economic Census Industry Series, these new figures for the retail trade sector provide data on the number of establishments, sales, payroll, number of employees, value of product line sales and other data items at the national level by industry. Other findings include: * Women’s, juniors’ and misses’ clothing product line sales accounted for more than 15 percent ($1.4 billion) of total used merchandise store sales. Sales of antiques made up almost 13 percent ($1.2 billion) of the total sales of the 17,779 used merchandise stores in the United States. * Total sales from used merchandise stores increased $1.5 billion (nearly 20 percent) since 2002, while the number of used mer...

Think that Twitter is all about people announcing what they ate for breakfast? Well, it is. But it also offers more interesting artistic possibilities. Want to know how your favorite author feels about their process? While lots of authors just use Twitter to promote their book signings, the following list includes more than 100 authors who use Twitter to carry on a conversation with their readers and offer some insight: Literary Tweets: 100+ of the Best Authors on Twitter And believe it or not, there are non-celebrities on Twitter with huge followings. They have mastered the story-telling possibilities of 140 characters and manage to make their tweets more useful for the reader than the author. Read more in this Washington Times article: " Short(est) Stories: The Art of Twitterature Means Making 140 Characters Count "

Alexis pointed out to me that there have been several articles in recent issues of the Capital District Business Review regarding the upcoming changes in qualifying for business tax credits under New York's Empire Zone program. Here's what's happening, in a nutshell: 1) Recent legislation states that businesses that qualified under the 2008 provisions of the law will now have to re-apply in 2009 under new guidelines. 2) There are roughly 9,000 companies in New York that currently qualify. The new legislation a) will remove companies that fail to meet a ratio of at least $1 of wages & investment for every $1 received as a credit from the state; b) requires new applicants to meet a $20-to-$1 ratio ($10-to-$1 for manufacturers); and c) ends the program on June 30, 2010 (a year earlier than previously scheduled). Empire State Development has been charged with verifying which companies among the current 9,000 are still eligible. ESD plans to have much of this process finish...

During staff training this past week, I attended the session titled "How the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 will Impact the Small Business Community - IRS Online Small Business Resources." While I learned useful information from Mr. Richard Torres from the IRS and Suzanne Reusch from the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance about tax breaks that are included in the Stimulus Act, I also learned about an extremely useful website for our Spanish-speaking customers. GobiernoUSA.gov "offers up-to-date official information in Spanish on government programs and services at the federal, state, and local levels." The website is the Spanish language version of USA.gov . Both are portals to "all official transactions, services, and information that the U.S. Government has to offer."