3 Things You Should Know About Small Business: Oct. 5

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- What's happening in small business today?

1. Are you ready for the holiday shopping rush? It may only be early October, but small retailers expecting to win share from their big-box competitors need to have their ducks in a row for the holiday shopping season. Even though shoppers may wait until the last minute, small businesses should prepare for the influx of shoppers and sales now, according to U.S. News.

The most important tip is using online tools to manage sales, inventory and shipments and for e-commerce businesses using an online shopping cart that has strong content management system built in like Magento or OpenCart, the article says.

This might be obvious but stock up on inventory ahead of time. Look to past sales to determine which products needed more inventory and also stock up on supplies, like packaging.

Be sure to tell customers well in advance via your website or social media and any other way you communicate when the last day is to place an order to get it before Christmas.

Offer holiday discounts to draw in new customers by offering coupon codes for free shipping or discounts for first-time customers, for example. Your website should be up and running 100% of the time during the busy season. Ensure that the site can handle the additional traffic and transaction processing and of course, have a back-up plan in case of emergency.

2. Five facts both Obama and Romney conveniently omitted. The two candidates mentioned the phrase "small business" a combined 29 times during Wednesday night's presidential debate, but there are certain small-business facts they conveniently left out, according to Huffington Post.

One such example was that small businesses, in fact, don't create the majority of jobs. According to the article, since 1990, large firms of more than 500 employees have done a better job at job creation than small firms with less than 50 employees, the article says, citing Jared Bernstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and a HuffPost blogger.

He adds that studies that show small businesses create most of the jobs are including establishments that have up to 500 employees.

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