Expanding Your Business

Learn to iden­ti­fy when you are ready to grow and how to do it properly

You’ve had a suc­cess­ful launch and busi­ness has been good. Now it’s time to grow. Growth can be risky. It is impor­tant to tru­ly eval­u­ate the cur­rent suc­cess of your busi­ness and for­mu­late a real­is­tic growth strat­e­gy. Rapid growth with­out a foun­da­tion of suit­able capac­i­ty is gen­er­al­ly a fast track to busi­ness failure.

Plans for expan­sion must assess the economies of scale. Will an expan­sion result in any cost advan­tage for your busi­ness? Will your cur­rent cus­tomers remain loy­al as you seek to attract more? Will they remain loy­al in the face of an expan­sion? These are impor­tant ques­tions to con­sid­er as you revis­it your busi­ness planning.

Expand­ing your busi­ness may involve hir­ing staff. Com­mu­ni­ty Employ­ment Choic­es in Strathroy is avail­able to assist you with hir­ing, train­ing and wage sub­sidy information.

Staffing brings a wide vari­ety of respon­si­bil­i­ties that many start-up busi­ness­es may not have con­sid­ered in the ini­tial plan­ning stages. Your employ­ees require pro­tec­tion. The Work­place Safe­ty and Insur­ance Board (WSIB) will ensure that your employ­ees are com­pen­sat­ed in the event of a work­place injury. You can con­tact them at 1−800−387−0750 or online at www​.wsib​.on​.ca. It is of crit­i­cal impor­tance to a grow­ing busi­ness, and your legal respon­si­bil­i­ty as an employ­er to pro­tect the health and safe­ty of your employ­ees. All mat­ters of Employ­ment Stan­dards Infor­ma­tion, such as hours of work, statu­to­ry hol­i­days, wages, leaves of absence etc. can be accessed through the Min­istry of Labour at 1−800−531−5551 or www​.labour​.gov​.on​.ca.

Your expan­sion plans may involve an oppor­tu­ni­ty to export or import a prod­uct. The fol­low­ing gov­ern­ment web­sites may be of spe­cif­ic inter­est for the grow­ing busi­ness owner.

• Ontario Exports
• Inter­na­tion­al Trade Canada
• Cana­da Bor­der Ser­vices Agency
• CRA Record Keep­ing Guide
• GST/HST tables

If a loan is required for your growth, in per­son sup­port for busi­ness plan­ning expan­sion is offered through your local Com­mu­ni­ty Futures Devel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion. Vis­it the Com­mu­ni­ty Futures Mid­dle­sex Busi­ness Help Cen­tre. Meet with an advi­sor to dis­cuss your busi­ness growth and finan­cial plans.

Does your expan­sion require a move from a home office to a bricks and mor­tar loca­tion? Or maybe you’ve out­grown your cur­rent loca­tion? You can access avail­able com­mer­cial prop­er­ty list­ings here Mid­dle­sex Avail­able Properties