Sunday, December 12, 1999
SMALL-BUSINESS DIARY
Computer seminar free, online
Technology investments are on the rise by small businesses, which is one reason Dell Computer is offering a free online seminar Wednesday to help small businesses deal with technology. Cahners In-Stat Group projects that while small businesses spent $8 billion on computers and other high-technology investments in 1998, they will spend $13 billion by 2002.
The Webcast event will offer advice on how to build a network of personal computers and why that network will be increasingly valuable. For more information, contact Dell at www.dell.com/breakfast
Avon offers female entrepreneur awards
Applications for the Avon Women of Enterprise Awards are available through Avon's Web site at www.avon.com to honor entrepreneurs who have become successful business owners. Honorees will receive a paid trip to New York City on June 15 and a $1,000 cash award to promote entrepreneurial success.
Each candidate must have been profitably self-employed for five or more years with an annual business revenue of $250,000. Applications are due Jan. 14. For more information, call (212) 282-7110.
Many more firms skipping Y2K fix
Nobody knows how to procrastinate like a small-business owner. The National Federation of Independent Business estimates that the number of small firms with no inoculation for the Y2K bug might be almost two-thirds more than previously estimated.
The foundation estimates that 1.25 million to 1.5 million small employers have made no effort to detect and correct any Y2K-related glitches in their operating equipment. The group estimated in April that the year-end number of unprepared small firms would be about 850,000. That means that firms that had plans have now scrapped them.
The federation estimates that the procrastinators represent about 25 percent of all the small businesses in the United States. In October, the federation surveyed about 500 small-business owners and found that 83 percent considered the problem “not very serious” or “not at all a problem.”
In the past year, the federation found, concern has declined to the point that only half as many small employers now rate Y2K problems as being “very serious” or “somewhat serious.”
Business bookshelf
From Business Dad: How Good Businessmen Can Make Great Fathers (and Vice Versa) by Tom Hirschfeld (Little, Brown; $23): “All across the country, business dads are shouldering more and more of the household burdens. In 1998, the Families and Work Institute released a survey of 2,877 workers showing that fathers in 1997 were spending half an hour more each weekday, and a full hour more each day off, with their children than in 1977.”
Web site aims at college shoppers
Chiquita upbeat on recovery
Official sponsors line up at speedway
Miller up for new challenge with Rite Aid
A cut above the rest
SMALL-BUSINESS DIARY
Pokemon mania advances
Washboard maker thrives in heart of Ohio
PRICIEST HOMES
