The theme of last night’s meeting was Business Issues & Challenges for 2012.
We are still deep in the “crisis” and we asked our members to talk about the challenges that they are facing in the coming months. This elicited a very interesting discussion amongst the members, with each member outlining the challenges that they are facing within their own businesses.
The output of the discussions follows:
| Business | Issues faced by the Business Owner |
| Business 1 | Prices have not increased in 10 years but this has not prevented a decline in overall client volume. Customers are having to choose between a meal out per week or whether to afford the services on offer as the prices are similar and the exchange rate has been detrimental to a mostly British target market most of whom are reliant on pensions. However, this particular problem has been alleviated of late with the rise of the £ against the €.The service is provided at weekdays only, so younger employed and self-employed people are not generally able to attend events. Targeting schools is a possible alternative strategy, as schools are cutting back on the teaching of non-core subjects.
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| Business 2 | The main challenge is getting business through the door, many communities are “tied” to their current providers and there is only a very small window of opportunity around the time of each annual contract renewal that can be exploited.Competition is predominately from traditional Spanish providers who tend to provide inadequate information on how community money is spent. A frequent lack of transparency and auditability opens up dangers of negligent or even criminal behaviour on the part of current incumbents. Whilst this is a concern for each community, it opens up opportunities for a business offering a transparent and properly conducted professional service.
Apathy of the expatriates in Spain is perceived as a problem: they want to complain but they won’t actually do anything about their complaints. Getting concerted action for community voting is therefore a time-consuming process that eats into the profitability of each project. Another issue facing expatriates is that the laws governing communities are poorly understood.
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| Business 3 | The owner of this business started it as a foil to Facebook pages that have information and offers that disappear very quickly due to the timeline nature of Facebook. Using an internet platform allows Facebook linkage – but permits posts to stay “live” and relevant longer – offering a discernible benefit to contributors.There are two key challenges facing the owner. First, start-up costs and barriers to entry are low and so competition is extensive. A second problem is that the owner also promotes the site with a Facebook page and potential clients post (at no charge) on the FB page rather than posting them (at no charge but slightly more effort) on the proper site.
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| Business 4 | This niche business has been operating for four years and the main challenge is raising awareness. The size and scope do not currently justify significant expenditure and so most promotional activity currently takes place via Facebook.Hires are either nightly (special events) or weekly (e.g. cruises).
Having business premises would be ideal to help generate extra custom.
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| Business 5 | Outside the summer season, there is a specific part of the day which is extremely quiet and the challenge facing the owner was how to improve occupancy during this period. Members had several suggestions for improving trade during this period, drawing on their experience of similar businesses in the area. |
| Business 6 | Trade has been steadily increasing, both in terms of volume of orders and order size but cash flow is a problem as they ask for a significant deposit with full payment on delivery.Filling backhaul and, to a lesser extent seasonality are issues that are challenges facing this business. Increasing fleet size is being examined by the business owner, but there are investment and employment legislation issues which need to be considered in more detail before taking this step.
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| Business 7 | The nature of this business is that there are no barriers to entry relating to cost or qualifications. In addition, while the generic service can provide the opportunity for increasing each client’s business trade, no guarantee can be offered that this will be the case. The client needs to provide the goods and services required by consumers, but this is the owner’s ultimate responsibility.The business is particularly affected by the poor economic climate and a particular challenge facing all owners of businesses like this is the difficulty of selling a service which does not yield immediate benefit to clients. |
At a future meeting, we will also discuss possible solutions to the challenges faced by our members. This is also bound to be a very interesting meeting.
