Small businesses are constantly facing challenging situations in day-to-day business life, but when an unforeseen natural disaster strikes, it can be catastrophic for business owners. But there is help to support those in small business that are doing it tough, with mentoring and other services.
The Australian government announced the Small Business Advisory Service – Natural Disaster Assistance Program (SBAS-NDAP) in early 2011.
It provides support and advisory services to small businesses that have been directly or indirectly affected by natural disasters.
I am the founding manager of Belmont BEC, and we have assisted over 20,000 small businesses nationally since 1994, 5000 of which are fashion or textile, clothing and footwear related sectors.
We are the only non-geographical business enterprise centre providing online support to businesses under SBAS-NDAP, but they must be a small business to qualify and have no more than 20 employees. We were among 25 not-for-profit business advisory organisations that received funding and will continue to provide national assistance ‘virtually’ through My Business Incubator, which is also supported by the Textile Clothing Footwear Resource Centre of Western Australia and Designedge Fashion Incubator.
The free and low-cost services delivers support through telephone assistance, email, mentoring through web meetings and group training webinars, with all services provided by specialist business advisors and industry professionals. The floods in NSW and Victoria are our first ‘formal’ natural disaster assistance project, but we were assisting businesses after the Black Saturday fires in Victoria with our TCF Australia e-commerce and website free training in 2010/11.
The main areas that retailers have been affected is loss of stock, records, insurance issues and lost clientele. Staff have lost their homes, families have had to relocate and battle financial stress and cash flow issues. The main areas that designers have been affected is loss of retailers, agents, distributors, insurance issues and bad debts. Marketing is a main issue as everyone needs to find new clients.
Some of the ways we can help are:
- Free access to all our online live webinar training www.belmontbec.com/calendar.
- We also provide up to three hours mentoring with a business advisor to assist through the main urgent business issues. This can be conducted via phone/email/web meeting, regardless of location.
- We can provide legal and accounting support as well for a business issue.
All businesses need to do is email us at support@belmontbec.com or phone 08 9479 3777 to get assistance. They can also register at www.mybusinessincubator.com.au