I was recently searching through the dress rack at a gem of a consignment shop in Mystic, Conn., called Pennywise, and I felt compelled to ask the store's owner how business has been.

I'm usually fighting back other women when I rifle through such shops, so I wondered why the store wasn't packed given the fact that discount shops tend to fare better during a recession.

But Donna Maden, the owner of a 22-year old family run consignment shop, told me sales are down substantially this year.

"There's just not a lot going on. Not a lot of people. Not a lot of tourists," Maden explained.

It's the same story for many small tourist destinations across the country. They are the places that are likely to suffer most in the current economic climate, according to Maggie Daniels, an associate professor of tourism and events management at George Mason University.

Tourism hubs are not only being hurt by consumers cutting back on vacations, they're also smarting from businesses scaling back on travel for their employees, she noted.

Larger cities that attract tourists, such and New York and Washington, D.C., will be able to hold their own, but smaller towns that survive on tourism will face the biggest challenges because they don't have the size or critical mass to bring big events to their areas, Daniels said.

Daniels told me she was recently in Manassas, Va., speaking to business owners. One retailer told her: "We could be handing out $20 bills and we couldn't get people in."

Mystic has a lot going for it. It's a quaint little seaside town with an aquarium, a major seaport and the famed Mystic Pizza restaurant. It's also very close to two major tribal casinos.

But despite being one of the Northeast's top tourist spots, Mystic faces some challenges this year. Drug maker Pfizer is one of the major employers in the area, but it has eliminated hundreds of jobs. And so relying heavily on tourism isn't helping Mystic in this economy.

"Everyone is being touched by this," said Tricia Cunningham, president of the Greater Mystic Chamber of Commerce, referring to the drop off in tourism. "We are definitely seeing a decrease in sales and hotel stays."

But while a couple of businesses have closed down as a result of the economy, some are expanding, she added.

A store in downtown Mystic called Stoneware Clothing is opening a second store in early April, Cunningham said.

Tom Taber, owner of Mystic's Taber Inne & Suites, said his business was slightly down in January, but holding its own this month. And 2008 was a good year because it was about even with 2007, which was his best year ever, he said.

"People always need to get away even when things are really bad," he explained.

What's your take? How has tourism been in your town, and how is it impacting your business? Are you planning to cut back your own vacation plans?

Venturedeal.com provides funding news from the world of VC's. You can find out about the latest deals, what industries are attracting attention, and perform due dilligence on potential investors.

1. Raleigh, NC.

2. Charlotte, NC.

3. Seattle, WA.

4. Austin, TX.

5. Boise, ID.

Source: BizJournals.com

Small Business Newsmakers

Rep. Nydia M. Velazquez (D-NY), Chairwoman of the House Small Business Committee and a senior member of the Financial Service Committee, discusses the state of the economy and what the federal government is doing to help small business owners.

Lessons from the Great Depression

Many politicians and pundits are comparing the current economy to the Great Depression of the 1930s, and businesses have to be resourceful to survive. See how Ella Brennan, owner of The Commander's Place, an iconic family-owned New Orleans restaurant that survived the Depression, is using lessons passed down from those hard times to guide her business right now.

Panelists

--Lawrence Gelburd, successful entrepreneur and instructor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

--Doug Tatum, founding Chairman of Tatum, LLC., working with clients from state and federal governments, startups, and multinational corporations.

From the Floor

Your Business hit the floor of the American International Toy Fair in New York to find out small business owners' thoughts on what Washington and the Obama Administration is doing to help them survive during these tough economic times. 

Profit Margin: Franchising Your Business

Rieva Lesonsky, CEO of SMB Connects, a provider of information, data, decision support tools and research for and about America's small and midsize businesses, discusses the best options for potential franchisees.

We're debuting a new segment in the show in a couple of weeks where we get small business owners' take on important questions from the floor of the nation's biggest trade shows.

Earlier this week I went to the 2009 Toy Fair at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York. As the mother of two kids, I found it hard to walk through the show and not get distracted at every turn, but once I got my fill of testing out new toy trucks and pens that light up, I did get the chance to get to the task at hand: Getting a reading on how the companies at the show feel about their prospects in this economy.

I asked everyone I spoke with if they felt that the steps being taken in Washington, D.C., would help the company. Most people I spoke with didn't need credit. Most had never used the services of the Small Business Administration (SBA) and said they didn't plan to. Many said they're not in a position to take advantage of any tax breaks. Nobody I spoke to had a sense of how Washington's efforts would have a direct impact on their company. What they all cared about -- and if they were worried, what they were worried about -- was getting customers in the door. In general, I heard that they were not looking for something in particular from Washington; instead, they were just looking for something that boosts the economy as a whole and translates into more customers for them.

Interestingly, the most optimistic small business owners I spoke with were those who were just starting out -- a kite maker who launched eight months ago and a toy car maker who opened his doors within the last few months to name a few.

This makes sense. These people have not taken the psychological hit of seeing their revenue fall. On the contrary, they were able to prepare for a slow economy by keeping their start-up costs low and have been able to take advantage of a slow economy by paying less for what they need -- whether that's furniture for the office, or good employees.

I'd love to hear what you think. Do you think Washington's efforts will have a direct impact on your business?

This economy has got me scratching my head a lot lately.

There are just so many things I don't get, especially when it comes to financing. We're told constantly that banks, venture capital firms and other lending institutions are reluctant to hand out loans, and tons of small business owners I talk to tell me they're being squeezed because of the tight reins on financing right now.

So how the heck did a company that hasn't made a red cent get $35 million in venture capital money?

This week we found out Twitter, the social networking site, scored $35 million in venture capital, bringing its total financing infusion to $55 million.

The company is bringing in the gold, but doesn't have a plan yet to show how it will be turning the worldwide obsession with micro blogging that it has launched into actual revenues.

This from the Associated Press:

Twitter intends to start testing ways to make money this spring. And co-founder Evan Williams promises it won't drive away the more than 6 million people who have set up accounts on the unconventional communications network.

Twitter "intends" to test ways to make money this spring? This reminds me of companies during the dot-com boom, when just a cool idea translated into big VC dollars, but many firms didn't even make a dime.

We're in a recession, right?

Don't get me wrong. I love Twitter and use it almost every day. I think it's a great tool to network for a job, or promote your small business. But how come lenders and investors are saying "yes" to Twitter but "no way" to other firms right now?

I asked some industry experts to help explain why.

Here's a sampling of their thoughts:

"The reason a 'company' like Twitter can get financing when tangible businesses can't is the same reason Google spent $1.65 billion to acquire YouTube. It's the same reason that scores of companies with no revenues saw their stock prices skyrocket during the dot-com bubble: these guys have a big audience. For Twitter, it's the million-plus-strong user-base. Venture capital investors seem to agree that there has to be a way to monetize a service like Twitter -- after all, some of its users (including small businesses and entrepreneurs) have managed to leverage the site to grow their businesses in a big way. While a number of social sites (like Digg, which lost $4 million in the first three quarters of 2008) have floundered when it comes to bringing in a return on investment for venture capitalists, we'll see what the future holds for Twitter."

Jonas Elmerraji, portfolio manager and editor of Rhino Stock Report.

"Largely because they touch so many people. There is a standing belief that if a firm can touch a lot of people then the value of that touch can be monetized. In this instance, the most likely path is one of data mining. Applied, this would be real-time analysis on consumer interests, wants and needs, which could be translated into advertising offers, investment insight and politics."

Rob Enderle, technology analyst, Enderle Group.

"The social networking space is very hot from a Web traffic and investment standpoint, so a company that is not in this space may not be as desirable by the VC and investment community."

Scott Testa, marketing teacher at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia.

My two favorite comments came from a few of my followers on Twitter who responded to my recent tweet: "Financing riddle: why can no-sales-generating Twitter get $35 million in VC seemingly over night?/i thought money was tight."

"it's all about potential. I'm v bullish on Twitter's ability to monetize audience. surprised if it doesn't grow to be a $1Bn biz."

twitter.com/acton

"Twitter slept with someone rich?"

twitter.com/AlyzabethM

Now that makes sense.

What's your take? You can tweet me if you like: twitter.com/careerdiva.

Joy Gendusa runs her own business, but she's also made it her mission to help clients run their businesses as well. Gendusa is the CEO of PostCardMania, but she also speaks, writes newsletters, posts videos on YouTube, blogs and writes books. Joy's goal is to teach all of her clients (and others) how to market themselves. Her own business took a tumble during the mortgage crisis. Mortgage companies used to account for almost half of her business, but that figure has been dramatically reduced. As many entrepreneurs cut costs, Joy is trying to educate her clients as to why marketing is one of the last things they should scale back.

Panelists

--Rod Kurtz, senior editor at Inc. Magazine, overseeing Inc.com's daily news coverage.

--Jennifer Hill, Vice President of Astia, a non profit organization which helps female entrepreneurs find funding.

Business War Chest: Unique Selling Propositions

Lynda Resnick, CEO of FIJI Water, successful entrepreneur, and co-author of "Rubies in the Orchard: How to Uncover the Hidden Gems in Your Business," discusses how business owners can find, create, and market their unique selling proposition.

Elevator Pitch

Dave and Stacy Bruns, co-founders of Charlottesville Day School, a private school that educates early childhood and elementary age children through enrichment programs focused on music and physical education, are looking for capital to purchase a new building. 

1. Get everyone involved

2. Offer special programs

3. Wellness incentives

4. HSA-Qualified plans

5. Renew later in the year

Source: SMSmallBiz.com

MissionStatements.com is a collection of mission statements from a wide range of businesses and organizations. So if you're looking to re-work some of your core philosophies, you can check out the mission statements of Fortune 500 companies, non-profits, and other small businesses for some guidance.

My local newspaper has been shrinking and that's making me very sad. But you know what's been making me very mad? The number of coupons in the damn thing seems to be multiplying.

I may not be able to read in-depth stories about my community, but I can get 50 cents off diapers and poisoned peanut butter products. (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

What will happen to all those glossy coupons when the foretold death of newspapers finally occurs in this country?

One entrepreneur is already benefiting from print media's downfall, and the economic downturn.

Steven Boal, CEO of Coupons.com, saw his sales rise nearly 200 percent in 2008 compared to the previous year.

"The economy, the decline of newspapers and the natural migration from the print world to the Web is helping our business," he explained.

Basically, Coupons.com, based in Mountain View, Calif., allows consumers to print out coupons from the Web and carry them to their local grocery stores, bypassing newspapers altogether.

Boal says the Web site offers about 1,600 coupons every day, compared to the 30 or so you get in your Sunday paper.

I don't know about you, but I'm not coupon savvy. I see all those people in the stores with their coupons and I'm always envious of the money they save. I often cut them out but rarely have them with me when I need them most -- at the supermarket checkout line.

I thought coupon use was actually on the decline, and was surprised when I heard Coupons.com was doing so well.

"For 2008, the use of paper coupons is staying steady at 2.6 billion coupons redeemed -- the third year in a row at that level," notes Matthew Tilley, director of marketing for Inmar, a promotions logistics firm. "However, that three-year trend is a reversal of the 15 years of year-over-year decline in coupon use prior to 2006."

Economic woes are boosting coupon use, notes Tilley. (His firm has a contractual agreement with Coupons.com). 

It makes sense. Given the economy, people want to save money right now.

Coupons.com's Boal says consumers who use his service redeem about $2,000 annually in coupon savings.

That's a nice chunk of change in a struggling economy.

So a coupon renaissance makes sense. During the Great Depression, coupons saw a burst of interest.

This from the UK-based Web site PromotionalCodes.org:

"When the Depression hit, people had to do everything that they could possibly do to save money. One of the things that they could do was to start using coupons for all of their purchases. It was during this time that clipping coupons really became a widespread act that people engaged in specifically for the purpose of saving money on things that they needed or wanted to buy. Prior to this, the drive for coupons was primarily from businesses seeking to advertise but because of the economic demands of the time, the drive for coupons came more from the customer's need to save money."

Do you use coupons? Do you use traditional paper ones, or Web coupons? Do you offer consumers coupons for your products or services? Are they helping you out in this economy?

Small Business Newsmakers

Richard Murphy, editor of FORTUNE Small Business Magazine, and William Dunkelberg, Chief Economist for the National Federation of Independent Business, discuss the status of the economic stimulus package and what it means for small business owners.

Moving Forward

Despite the economic downturn, Grant Cleveland says he's going forward with plans to launch as many as 50 new products in 2009. His company, DuneCraft, produces low-cost, educational kits that sell at stores like Toys "R" Us, Borders and K-Mart. The company already has 250 items on the market, but Grant insists he's not backing down from his expansion plans. The Cleveland-based company sells its products to major retailers, catalogs, and online. Grant says his profits only rose about 6% in 2008. He says the number would have been closer to 200% if the economy hadn't taken a turn. Grant says there's a market for educational items especially when they're affordable.

Panelists

--Susan Wilson Solovic, CEO & Chairman of SBTV.com, a television network on the Internet dedicated to small business.

--Ben Terk, partner with Rho Ventures, specialzing in the information technology and communications sectors.

Profit Margin: Web site design

Tom Leung, Senior Business Product Manager for Google, provides some tips on how small business owners can build an effective homepage.

Elevator Pitch

Jason Olim, CEO and co-founder of Freshman Fund, a service that lets people give and get the gift of a college education, pitches his company to the panel. He is looking for capital to add more content to his growing site.

1. Franchises
2. Traffic-driven web sites
3. Independent contracting
4. Green businesses
5. Restaurants

Source: U.S. News & World Report

Trade shows can be a great way to meet new people and get the word out about your business. EventsInAmerica.com provides listings to trade shows all over the country. You can search by industry, learn about booth sizes, and find contact information.

From JJ Ramberg:

This past weekend our senior producer Chris and I went down to Tampa to do a story on small businesses that were working with the NFL around the Big Game.  As so often happens, there were so many more interesting things about the companies we covered than we had time to talk about on air. 

We met a woman named Cindy Dervech who owns a company called Breezin Entertainment and Productions which provides bands and other entertainment for events.  She was thrilled to be working with the NFL since, as you can imagine, business had been down recently. 

When I asked her how she was surviving in this economy when people and companies were trimming their entertainment expenses, she told me that she had expanded her business into a diet consulting company – not exactly what I was expecting to hear. 

At first blush there seems to be little synergy between a weight-loss company and an outfit that provides bands. 

Cindy herself had recently lost a lot of weight.  And she found that she was getting asked quite often by the brides she worked with (to provide music for their weddings) how she did it.  It occurred to her that she could market two services to her customers. 

While the services may usually be unrelated, for a moment in time, when you are a bride, they're not.   When it comes to planning a wedding, losing weight and hiring a band are on the same to-do list.

Cindy says that because of this new source of revenue, she's been able to stay alive in a time when things could have been really tough.  A lot of experts come on our show saying that it's important to look for alternate sources of revenue when times are tough.  Cindy serves as a great reminder that you should look beyond the obvious.

With the credit markets gummed up, everyone is holding their breath and waiting for banks and other lenders to re-open their money spigots. But for many small businesses the funds may be too little, too late.

Until recently, GiGi Stetler's 35-employee business -- RV Sales Broward in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. -- was booming, hitting sales of more than $20 million in 2007.

In 2008, the business "crashed," she said. Sales plunged to $11 million, and three months ago she let go of the bulk of her staff and now only employs nine. A decline in sales and the tightening of credit was the double whammy for her business.

"We can barely pay the electric," she laments.

Stetler's hoping the credit markets will open up soon, but even if they do she worries about what banks will think when she hands over her financials for the past 90 days. That's what lenders will want to see before they pony up a loan, or line of credit.

It's a Catch-22 situation that will plague more and more small businesses in the United States the longer loans are hard to come by and the longer the recession drags on, according to Steve Bloom, past Atlanta chair of small business counseling service SCORE.

"From the bank's standpoint, they don't give money to people who need money," he explained.

Will President Obama's proposed economic stimulus plan help?

No one really knows yet how the billions in proposed funds from the government will or won't trickle down to small companies like Stetler's in the form of easier credit, he said.

However, since so many firms are in the same boat, Bloom expects underwriting requirements could potentially change, focusing more on a company's history of success and relying mainly on a good credit background.

But the longer the lousy economy persists, the more of a chance there is that entrepreneurs like Stetler may have trouble paying their bills, which in turn will hurt their credit records, he said.

Stetler is angry.

"The banks decided to pick up their marbles and go home," she said. "Lenders financed us to buy inventory from manufacturers, and those lenders pulled out of our industry when things started getting tough."

As a result, customers were less able to get loans to buy her RVs.

Now Stetler is hoping she can hang on until credit starts to loosen up, and before things get really bad.

That's just what Bloom suggests small business owners everywhere should be doing right now -- rethink your business plan, make adjustments in products in services and adapt to a bad economy, he advises.

"More millionaires are made during times like this. Competition gets less," he explained.

Indeed, millionaires will be made, but many long-time, successful businesses will also fall.

How many of you are in this Catch-22 situation? How are you coping?

Small Business Newsmakers: Mary Landrieu

--Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, discusses the Obama Administration's proposed economic stimulus package and the effect it would have on small business owners around the country.

Turning Away Your Biggest Client

Small business owners often dream of landing that one big client that can sustain their business. Jim Christy did just that, and found it was not all it was cracked up to be. Christy is the founder of Incredible Foods, a Pittsburgh-based pastry delivery company. When his company was hired by Starbucks in 1996 to distribute pastries to stores all over Pennsylvania and Ohio, he thought he had hit it rich. However, he found it difficult to meet the needs of the rapidly growing coffee giant. See why he decided to turn away his biggest client, and is finding his business is much easier to manage.

Panelists

--John Mariotti, President and CEO of The Enterprise Group, and author of "The Complexity Crisis, Why Too Many Products, Markets, and Customers Are Crippling Your Company--and What to do About It."

--Alfred Edmond, Editor-In-Chief of Black Enterprise Magazine, and Senior Vice President of Earl G. Graves Publishing Co. Inc.

--Farnoosh Torabi, Senior Correspondent for personal finance website TheStreet.com, and author of "You're So Money: Live Rich, Even When You're Not"

Small Business War Chest: Credit Insurance

Scott Pales, Vice President and U.S. Country Manager for Atradius Trade Credit Insurance, Inc., discusses credit insurance and how it can help small business owners.

Learning From the Pros: Jake Burton

Jake Burton founded Burton Snowboards in 1977 with the dream of turning his passion for snowboarding into a successful business. Three decades later the sport has become a mainstream phenomenon, and Burton is an industry leader selling snowboards and apparel around the world. Find out his strategies for success.

1. Small Business Development Centers

--SBA.gov

2. SCORE

--Score.org

3. Local Universities

4. Other Entrepreneurs

5. Social Networking

--Micromentor.org

--Partnerup.com

Source: WSJ.com

ZoomProspector is a free resource that can help you find a suitable location for your store or office. You can search communities by demographics such as average income, education, and available labor. You can also check out property listings and talk with site selection experts in your region.