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While Neepawa EDO Marilyn Crewe has been very successful in helping attract and launch new businesses in Neepawa over the past few years, now she’s turning some more attention to fostering the businesses that already exist in the community.

“Economic development typically happens in community in one of three ways,” says Crewe. “Entrepreneurship, [including] events like What’s the Big Idea; investment attraction, where we invite a business to come to Neepawa to be here; or business retention and expansion, which means supporting the businesses we already have so they can be successful, grow, and be everything they need to be for our community.”

Starting on May 20 and running through June 6, the EDO’s office is working with Deloitte Canada to run a business retention and expansion (BR&E) survey with Neepawa businesses. They will be reaching out to a randomised selection of Neepawa businesses by email and phone to gather information such as whether the business is preparing to expand, what challenges they face doing business in Neepawa, whether there are any training needs, and the state of the available workforce.

Any specific needs that come to light during the survey, whether they are red flags such as “we are in danger of closing” or green flags such as “we need more land to grow our business”, can be forwarded directly to the EDO’s office to be addressed quickly but also handled in a confidential manner. Otherwise, the data will be compiled to show the overall state of the Neepawa business community.

“The more responses we get,” says Crewe, “the better that aggregate data is.” She hopes that getting the word out about the project now will mean that more businesses will pick up that phone call or reply to that email when it comes.

Following completion of the BR&E survey, a final report will be prepared by the end of June, which will compile the data but will scrub any identifying information about participants. This report will inform economic development strategies for the town as a whole, which, depending on the outcome, might include developing new programs or working with Council to make town policies more business-friendly. 

In the long term, Crewe plans to use this survey as baseline data to begin to compare year-over-year trends in the Neepawa business community.