We’re continuing to up our game in the social media world with our brand new page on the business networking site, LinkedIn.
Through it, we are looking forward to making new connections with businesses, including those here in New Hampshire and those outside of the Granite State who would like to see how we do business, what the climate is like, where the success stories are – information like that.
So we hope you will click on the link, follow us and recommend us to your friends and colleagues. We’d like to be the kind of site(s) you can enjoy with a cup of coffee.
We’re of an age where if you had said a few years ago words like ‘blog,’ ‘social media,’ or ‘twitter’ (outside the context of enthusiastic chickadees) and how important they would be for business, we would have politely nodded and wondered what was in your coffee.
We’re on Facebook and feel the love there, with more than 3,200 fans ‘liking’ us. Among economic development agencies, we’re pretty much out front, with the exception of some place called New York City.
Nearly 3,900 followers catch our Tweets and we also have a YouTube channel.
The mission of the Division of Economic Development is to help maintain and expand business in New Hampshire and to both encourage and promote new industries and businesses.
By using social media, we can act fast to spread a message, to send expertise, knowledge and assistance to those who need it and to those who have it to share.
Along the way, you’ll learn about what makes the New Hampshire economy tick and uptick. In return, we’d like to learn about your business and your success.
So please find us on your favorite forum and follow us – comment on our links, contribute your own, tell us your news and your stories.
In one click, we bring it to you, straight from the Granite State.
If you think of it as dull, dusty, tedious and a dead-end, then it’s time to pay a visit to modern manufacturing.
In New Hampshire, it’s huge. It’s our top industry, bringing in four times the revenue that the number two industry, tourism, does. A full 95 percent of all exports are manufactured here and in the past eight years, those exports have risen three times faster than our overall economy.
Manufacturing provides jobs for over 67,000 people. They are good jobs that do great things. One company may not build the rocket that flies into space, but one company can make the vital components and make them better than anyone else on the planet.
This industry no longer takes place in your grandfather’s factory. Today’s plants are clean, modern
Manufacturing Matters in the Granite State
and high tech. Working in them requires some real skills – they are no longer places young people who don’t know what they want to do can go and pass a couple of years.
The challenge here in New Hampshire – and around the country – is letting high school students know of these opportunities right here at home – that they do not have to leave the state to find an exciting and challenging livelihood, that they can have rewarding careers in manufacturing where they live.
The day-long seminar will bring together teachers and manufacturers to discuss ways to make sure students with the capabilities and aptitude for this kind of career get on the right path, through training, education and encouragement.
It is going to be a very lively and educational day. Speakers include Gov. John Lynch, Department of Resources and Economic Development Commissioner George Bald and others from the field. The keynote speaker is Bill Symonds, director of Harvard University’s Pathways to Prosperity Project.
There will be much to talk about and we hope you will be a part of the discussion. Register here today.
In just a little over 24 hours, we hosted international delegations from Turkey (Wednesday) and China (Thursday). It’s not often we get to host to guests from overseas, so back-to-back visits is where the unique and unusual comes in. This tells us that from a global perspective, New Hampshire is rich in opportunity.
From our perspective, we do, of course, already know that … and we are quite confident that from these visits will come an awareness of the products made right here in the Granite State and create new markets for the companies that produce them.
When demand for products increases, so does the workforce and new jobs have to be filled.
Our Turkish guests were from the Istanbul Efficiency Business Association and arrived very eager and enthusiastic about exploring everything from cultural exchanges and a couple of our college campuses to making connections for another planned visit in September.
The Turkish Delegation arrived on Wednesday.
About 5,000 Turkish-Americans call New Hampshire home and Turkey ranks ninth among our trading partners. So there were no strangers in the group, just friends we hadn’t met yet.
On Thursday morning, we welcomed eight people from the Jilin province in China, many of them our counterparts in economic development, including Gao Cailin, Director General of the Office of Financial Affairs for the province and Dai Min, president of the Center for America-China Partnership.
Their tour included a visit to JP Sercel Associates of Manchester and a discussion about our high precision and advanced manufacturing industries.
New Hampshire companies exported products they make that totaled $4.3 billion last year and while parts of the world are dealing with their own challenging economies, China and Turkey are looking for new opportunities and new relationships.
And they are looking for them right here in New Hampshire.
The tide's coming in for the New Hampshire economy
This morning, the New Hampshire Bankers Association shared the results of a survey it took in March, after polling over 400 businesses of all sizes in all corners of the state.
In short, while some businesses still have lingering concern, access to credit is the least of their worries.
And this is a good thing, because Granite State banks still see – and believe in – local businesses as the engines that will propel New Hampshire out of the recession.
The findings of the survey are encouraging:
- 82 percent of all businesses surveyed said they had no difficulty accessing the credit they needed in the last 12 months;
- 94 percent said they looked to banks for their credit needs and
– 41 percent of businesses surveyed sought a loan or line of credit in the past year, and the majority of those companies – 62 percent – were approved for the full amount of the request.
Nationally, 20 percent of businesses expect the economy to expand in the next year, but New Hampshire businesses – 30 percent of them – expect it to grow over the next 12 months.
Perhaps the most promising result of the survey is that just over half of the businesses taking part in the poll – 52 percent – are confident they’ll see growth in both gross sales and revenues and 31 percent expect to add more employees as a result.
“It reflects an ongoing commitment by New Hampshire’s banks to partner with local businesses in order to help them grow,” said Christiana Thornton, president of the New Hampshire Bankers Association. “The majority of businesses continue to look to their bank for their financing needs, and receive the credit they are seeking. It is clear New Hampshire banks are playing a central role in supporting local businesses and helping to fuel the local economy.”
Our name – the Division of Economic Development – is also our mission. We work with businesses across the state, helping them grow, expand, adjust, innovate and prosper.
Idea Exchange
We could not do our job without the wisdom, experience, insight and guidance of our Economic Development Advisory Council. Established some years ago, the council assists us in planning and measuring our efforts. With 22 members from across all sectors of business and industry, their counsel is invaluable.
The quarterly EDAC meeting was held this morning. Attendance was robust and so were the reports from our membership. The consensus is that while the New Hampshire economy was not without some hardships in the recession, it weathered the challenges of the past few years much better than other states.
We apprised our council of what’s happening in our division and frankly, it’s exciting. Business recruitment and retention efforts are paying dividends. Our Office of International Commerce is reaching out around the globe for opportunities for New Hampshire companies. New ways to use social media, this blog and even the old fashioned methods of dissemination are spreading the word about the good things that are happening in the New Hampshire economy.
As sure as the purple lilacs will bloom in another couple of weeks, so is the Granite State economy.
New Hampshire has given the world a lot of what we can’t do without, like the first potato ever grown in the U.S. , the latex balloon, and (being that it’s Friday night) the corkscrew. These are items invented by curious minds devoted to finding a better way to make life easier, leaving a legacy of entrepreneurship that thrives in basements, old mills, backyards, sewing rooms and kitchens.
All across our state, that spirit of innovation and passion is alive and well and you can see it this weekend at The Made In NH Try It & Buy It Expo, sponsored by our friends at Business NH Magazine. We stopped by this afternoon and visited with some old friends who amaze us with their creativity, as well as emerging entrepreneurs and downright geniuses.
The Expo runs Saturday (April 14) from 10 – 8 and Sunday (April 15) from 10 – 4 at the Center of New Hampshire Expo Center at the Radisson Hotel in Manchester.
There are over 160 exhibitors, many of them friends from NH Made, which promotes products and services made right here in the Granite State.
In front of hundreds of people on the front lines of all the reasons people come here to visit the Granite State, they unveiled their new campaign.
Live Free and …
As Lori Harnois explains in the video, these three words invite visitors to fill in that last word. It’s indeed an invitation to be adventurous, follow a passion or just be. It invokes part of our state motto, a source of pride to us, and with this campaign, we invite our visitors to share all the things we love about New Hampshire.
Tourism is a $4 billion industry here — our second largest — and employs over 64,000 people. For every dollar spent to encourage visitors, more than $9 comes back. Beyond all the activities and the beauty, the intangible visitors find here – the sense of place and the spirit – that’s priceless.
Being that it’s Friday and it’s time to switch gears, finish this sentence:
It’s nice to be all dressed up and ready for the prom, but what if you haven’t been introduced to the person of your dreams?
This universal analogy is, of course, familiar to anyone who’s ever been 14, but it’s also familiar to small business owners who would like to connect with government contractors and large corporate buyers.
The Small Business Matchmaker gives small businesses that connection. This year’s matchmaker is from 8:30 a.m to 4 p.m., April 12 at the Nashua Technology Park. Registration is required. More information is available here.
(By the way, the headline? We know. Here it is so you can hum along with it.)
Two months before the shopping begins at the Merrimack Premium Outlets, representatives of the more than 100 stores that will open there in June went shopping for employees Friday. About 800 positions need to be filled and answering the call were more than 2,000 people who came out to Nashua Community College on Friday.
On hand were teenagers, many of whom were likely seeking their first summer job, moms looking for hours that will accommodate their family time and folks looking to change direction in their lives, for whatever the reason. In the gymnasium, there was energy, enthusiasm and optimism that will propel the employees, the stores, the region and New Hampshire further out of the economic malaise of the past few years.
Mark your calendars for the grand opening – June 14.
(Memo to Fossil: We’ll be back to admire that handbag you had on display …)
In the early spring, on a Monday morning, when you start it off with a groundbreaking ceremony for a 30,000-square-foot addition that is going to bring back 100 manufacturing jobs from China, it’s a good way to start the week.
