BR Newsletter

Industry periodicals can be effective research resource. Good publications contain a combination of articles on performance data, business operation tips and advice, as well as business profiles.

While you will rarely get in-depth statistical information from industry periodicals you will find useful highlights from current reports. If the data is intriguing you can then follow up with the source directly to find out if you can access or purchase more information.

Many of these periodicals also provide you with an “ear to the ground” to identify current issues affecting your industry.

One such magazine for the Fitness Club industry is Fitness Business Canada.

The latest January/February 2010 issue examines the outlook for 2010 as well as the future of boot camps. Other recent articles include Picking a club location (Jan 2009), Strategies for developing brand loyalty (Nov 2009), and top concerns within the fitness industry (March 2009).

How do you find appropriate industry periodicals?

Start your search with Google. Your search keywords should include the industry you are interested in enclosed within quotation marks (so Google knows to search for the phrase), followed by the words “magazine” and “Canada”.

By including the keyword Canada you help to ensure you find Canadian publications or at least those which include Canadian information. Canadian perspectives on various markets and industries are often distinct from that presented in American publications.

For good measure also put plus signs (“+”) in front of each search feature. For example:

+”fitness industry” +magazine +Canada

This tells Google that all the search terms must be included in the results. Follow-up on any of the search results that look promising. If nothing looks promising, try a related industry or an alternate description of your industry.

At one point in time, periodical web sites used to be rich in content including key articles and features from current and archive issues. Yes I have been around long enough to remember such a golden age of free information online! Today, due to economics, free content is becoming more limited. Google-ads only pay for so much!

Once you have identified a potential resource and exhausted their limited online features, go to your local library’s website to see if they have the publication included in any of the periodical databases available at their website. To locate your local library online: http://www.collectionscanada.ca/gateway/s22-200-e.html

Unfortunately most general library catalogues do not include the magazines covered in their periodical subscriptions. This means you cannot do a simple search to see if they have the magazine accessible online. You will have to go into each periodical database they subscribe to and then browse the periodical listings of each. Start with the Canadian specific databases such as Canadian Business and Current Affairs (CBCA). You will need a valid public library card to sign-in.

You may not find the periodical you are looking for. Periodical databases do not cover every magazine available. This is the case with Fitness Business Canada. If your magazine is not included in a periodical database return to the magazine’s website and look into the cost of an annual subscription. Oftentimes the subscription charge is minimal for the premium content you will receive. Fitness Business Canada is only $34 for an annual subscription.

Industry periodicals are a resource every business researcher should investigate.

I have just added the first Stats Link Canada Stats Pack for 2010.  This is a collection of 6 recently released stats related to small businesses in Canada.

The following topics are covered:

You can access this Stats Pack (2010-1) in HTML format on our Stats Link Canada web site. A PDF version is available at the the bottom of the linked page.

For more details and data related to these highlights use the Stats Link Canada ID numbers identified in the Stats Pack.

It is important for any business, whether for profit or not, to have financial benchmarks against which to anticipate potential performance and to measure results once operations have started.

The first tool every small business should look at is the Industry Canada SME Benchmarking Tool (formerly Performance Plus). This online resource provides income and expenditure data by NAICS (North American Industry Classification System). For more information on this resource see our Research Guide: Financial Ratios

While this tool is helpful there is an even better resource specific to non-profits. It is the Canada Revenue Agency’s Registered Charity Information Returns.

All registered charities are required to submit these returns. The resulting resource allows you to find out detailed information on income, expenditures, assets, and liabilities by individual charitable organization. The search options provided on the Canada Revenue Agency web site make it easy to focus on specific criteria. You can examine the performance of other organizations in your focus area or your community, or search by individual charity name.

You can use the financial information to examine your peers on their own or as raw data from which to compile your own benchmarks.

For example if you were interested in starting a charitable organization in Saskatchewan that focused on animal protection you can use the search function to retrieve a list of organizations that meet those two criteria.

From the resulting list, you can then manually compile the data in an EXCEL or OpenOffice.org Calc file. Yes, I said manually! If you are looking for free data, you have to be prepared to spend some time. Students, sons or daughters can be an effective resource if you are not inspired by the thought of entering numbers in a spreadsheet. As long as you keep your search criteria focused and do not try to compile information for all of Canada, the process should not be too onerous.

In about 30 minutes of work, I was able to determine that the median amount of money raised through fundraising alone in 2008 by animal protection organizations in Saskatchewan was $34,515. The average amount raised was $71,741 and the total for the “sector” was $1.1 million.

If you are not sure how to calculate median and average, use the help feature in EXECL or OpenOffice.org Calc. It will guide you through the whole process.

You can then examine individual organizations that perform above the median in your subset more closely to determine the factors that influenced their success such as community-size, number of employees, advertising and promotion budgets etc.

Of course your benchmarks do not need to be restricted to just fundraising. You can compile data on any of the revenue or expenditure categories covered in the Registered Charity Information Returns.

Combined all this information can be used to help create realistic cash flow projections and to plan your non-profit business operations effectively.