Every day is a new challenge for small- and medium-sized eCommerce businesses just trying to stay ahead of soaring inflation, rising interest rates, and increasing employee wages. SMBs are taking a step back from hiring to prepare for what could be the next Great Recession. Mikel Lindsaar, founder and CEO of StoreConnect, advocates for eCommerce 3.0 to keep SMBs moving forward despite economic resistance.

(San Francisco, CA) June 19, 2023 — It's a vicious cycle. Inflation goes up; the Federal Reserve compensates by raising interest rates; consumers can't afford the higher interest on loans, so they hold off on big purchases; the cost of doing business rises; companies cancel planned expansions and resort to layoffs; stock markets go down; consumers reduce spending; and a recession is born.1 Small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) typically do not have the resources or tools necessary to adapt to economic turbulence as easily as larger corporations. Mikel Lindsaar, CEO and Founder of StoreConnect, notes that "SMBs are always caught in the macroeconomic crossfire. They are left to contend with forces beyond their control, leading them to make some tough decisions. Many are cutting back their workforce and slowing down on hiring or stopping altogether, contributing to the economy's downward trajectory."

Incredibly, 99.9% of U.S. businesses are small businesses. There are 33.2 million SMBs that employ 46.4% of the workers nationwide, which is approximately 61.7 million jobs.2 So, when SMBs suffer, so does the nation. Inflation currently sits at 7.9%, the highest level since 1982, and 7 out of 10 small business owners cite inflation and the consequent increase in interest rates as a top concern. According to a MetLife-Chamber poll, 39% of smaller businesses have taken out a small business loan to offset the costs of inflation for supplies and materials and are feeling the impact of interest hikes on their ability to pay back the loan and borrow again in the future.3

As a result, less than 50% of small business owners plan to expand their workforce over the next year; the lowest level since June 2020, when the impact of the pandemic was beginning to unfold.4 Although the number of people actively looking for work increased by 346,000 to 5.3 million as of April 2023,5 job seekers are demanding higher compensation; salary expectations increased by 43% from Q1 2021 to Q1 2022.6 Several new studies have concluded that minimum wage hikes have measurable adverse effects on businesses and employment. Minneapolis and St. Paul serve as cautionary tales. Increased hourly rates in those areas resulted in lost jobs, fewer work hours, lower overall earnings, and significant industry losses for retail and restaurants that tend to hire more minimum-wage workers.7

For eCommerce SMBs, collaborative technology tools can increase operational efficiency by up to 130%. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms can streamline essential business processes, saving time, labor, and money.8 Lindsaar attests, "The world has experienced decades of economic downturns that have been mild to catastrophic. A huge advantage SMBs have that business owners of past generations didn't is an incredible wealth of easily accessible technology that can make an eCommerce David feel like an eCommerce Goliath. All they need is a single source of truth to make it happen."

StoreConnect is the only fully-integrated eCommerce, point-of-sale, content management system, and CRM platform powered by Salesforce. SMBs can maintain their competitive edge and accomplish more with less labor and fewer resources. Through the power of eCommerce 3.0, SMBs can realize their full potential without having to pay people to get computers to talk to each other. Rather than dealing with piecemeal technology for product support, marketing, customer data, and website management, StoreConnect provides customizable and scalable technology on one fully integrated platform. StoreConnect is Salesforce-native, giving SMBs easy access to all of the tools Salesforce has to offer.

Lindsaar affirms, "StoreConnect's mission is to help small- and medium-sized businesses spend their time on their core business needs by offering an affordable and incredibly flexible eCommerce solution that natively integrates with the world's number one customer relationship management system — Salesforce. Best of all, it just works. By mitigating labor concerns and strains on resources, StoreConnect allows SMBs to focus on their core strengths to achieve and exceed their business goals."

StoreConnect is Time. Well Spent.

About StoreConnect
Mikel Lindsaar, CEO and Founder of StoreConnect, is an experienced technology entrepreneur whose mission is to infuse small- and medium-sized businesses with the power to be successful in eCommerce 3.0 and scale to meet growing demand. Small companies can't waste time setting up their business on a platform only to repeat the process by changing platforms when they want to scale, nor do they want to waste time figuring out how to integrate multiple platforms. StoreConnect (built on the World's Number 1 CRM, Salesforce) gives clients a complete, powerful, configurable eCommerce and CRM solution where they can manage their website, online and in-store sales, provide amazing customer service, run all their digital marketing campaigns and have up-to-date detailed metrics, reporting and full understanding of their customer. They were awarded Salesforce's 2021 International Partner Innovation Award of the Year for the Retail sector and are changing the ease with which small businesses are run ─ with a manageable price tag. StoreConnect is Time. Well Spent. Visit https://getStoreConnect.com/.

References:
1. Rugaber, C. (2023, February 24). Federal Reserve rate hikes likely to cause a recession, research says. PBS. pbs.org/newshour/economy/federal-reserve-rate-hikes-likely-to-cause-a-recession-research-says#:~:text=But%20sometimes%20inflation%20pressures%20still,to%20a%20recipe%20for%20recession
2. Main, K. (2023, March 10). Small business statistics of 2023. Forbes. forbes.com/advisor/business/small-business-statistics/#:~:text=Nearly%20half%20of%20all%20U.S.,even%20have%20employees%20at%20all
3. How interest rate hikes impact small businesses. Business News Daily. (n.d.). businessnewsdaily.com/loans/fed-interest-rate-small-business
4. Person. (2023, May 17). America's biggest source of jobs is cooling off. The Wall Street Journal. wsj.com/articles/workers-are-still-needed-but-many-small-businesses-have-slowed-hiring-dfa30be6
5. The employment situation - April 2023 - U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (n.d.). bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
6. Johnson, R. (2022, May 2). Salaries on the rise: The push for greater pay amid the great resignation - glassdoor. Glassdoor Economic Research. glassdoor.com/research/push-for-greater-pay/
7. Paxton. (2023, May 19). New research finds minimum wages are still costing employees jobs, earnings. MinimumWage.com. minimumwage.com/2023/05/new-research-finds-minimum-wages-are-still-costing-employees-jobs-earnings/
8. Bentham, S. (2023, March 28). 5 Ways Technology Can Benefit Your Small Business. Innovators Central. innovatorscentral.ca/technology-benefits-for-small-business/#:~:text=Efficiency%20is%20everything%20for%20small,as%20businesses%20are%20less%20segmented