The Castlegar and District Chamber of Commerce held its second-annual Business Walk last Thursday.
Chamber representatives visited over 70 business and left surveys with many more.
The chamber was interested in finding out how business owners think their business is doing, how many employees they have, what they like about doing business in the area, if they plan to sell or retire, what training programs would benefit them and what struggles they might be having.
It will take the chamber a while to compile all of the data, but a few things were immediately noticeable.
The number of businesses rating their current state as good to excellent rose from 63 per cent last year to 70 per cent this year.
“One of the pieces I thought was incredible was that at many of the business that [were visited] were so busy that they couldn’t fill out the survey at the time,” said Chamber of Commerce executive director Tammy Verigin-Burk.
“The feedback was very strong that almost all of the businesses were feeling that there is just a real buzz in town right now, and that their businesses are becoming busier,” added Verigin-Burk. “That was really good news to hear.”
Employers reported that there is a shortage of skilled and experienced labour.
One thing some business would like to see is more walk-by business traffic — people out on foot or bike, going from store to store rather than just stopping at one location.
“Another piece of feedback is that people would like to see is that before people go out of town, is that they would do cost comparisons … because a lot of people will try to match prices found in Kelowna or Spokane,” said Verigin-Burk.
Some business in town were missed, and Verigin-Burk encourages those business owners to call the chamber. “Please contact me, we would love to have you fill out the survey,” she said.