Business Loans In Canada: Financing Solutions Via Alternative Finance & Traditional Funding

Business loans and finance for a business just may have gotten good again? The pursuit of credit and funding of cash flow solutions for your business often seems like an eternal challenge, even in the best of times, let alone any industry or economic crisis. Let’s dig in.

Since the 2008 financial crisis there’s been a lot of change in finance options from lenders for corporate loans. Canadian business owners and financial managers have excess from everything from peer-to-peer company loans, varied alternative finance solutions, as well of course as the traditional financing offered by Canadian chartered banks.

Those online business loans referenced above are popular and arose out of the merchant cash advance programs in the United States. Loans are based on a percentage of your annual sales, typically in the 15-20% range. The loans are certainly expensive but are viewed as easy to obtain by many small businesses, including retailers who sell on a cash or credit card basis.

Depending on your firm’s circumstances and your ability to truly understand the different choices available to firms searching for SME COMMERCIAL FINANCE options. Those small to medium sized companies ( the definition of ‘ small business ‘ certainly varies as to what is small – often defined as businesses with less than 500 employees! )

How then do we create our road map for external financing techniques and solutions? A simpler way to look at it is to categorize these different financing options under:

Debt / Loans

Asset Based Financing

Alternative Hybrid type solutions

Many top experts maintain that the alternative financing solutions currently available to your firm, in fact are on par with Canadian chartered bank financing when it comes to a full spectrum of funding. The alternative lender is typically a private commercial finance company with a niche in one of the various asset finance areas

If there is one significant trend that’s ‘ sticking ‘it’s Asset Based Finance. The ability of firms to obtain funding via assets such as accounts receivable, inventory and fixed assets with no major emphasis on balance sheet structure and profits and cash flow ( those three elements drive bank financing approval in no small measure ) is the key to success in ABL ( Asset Based Lending ).

Factoring, aka ‘ Receivable Finance ‘ is the other huge driver in trade finance in Canada. In some cases, it’s the only way for firms to be able to sell and finance clients in other geographies/countries.

The rise of ‘ online finance ‘ also can’t be diminished. Whether it’s accessing ‘ crowdfunding’ or sourcing working capital term loans, the technological pace continues at what seems a feverish pace. One only has to read a business daily such as the Globe & Mail or Financial Post to understand the challenge of small business accessing business capital.

Business owners/financial mgrs often find their company at a ‘ turning point ‘ in their history – that time when financing is needed or opportunities and risks can’t be taken. While putting or getting new equity in the business is often impossible, the reality is that the majority of businesses with SME commercial finance needs aren’t, shall we say, ‘ suited’ to this type of funding and capital raising. Business loan interest rates vary with non-traditional financing but offer more flexibility and ease of access to capital.

We’re also the first to remind clients that they should not forget govt solutions in business capital. Two of the best programs are the GovernmentSmall Business Loan Canada (maximum availability = $ 1,000,000.00) as well as the SR&ED program which allows business owners to recapture R&D capital costs. Sred credits can also be financed once they are filed.

Those latter two finance alternatives are often very well suited to business start up loans. We should not forget that asset finance, often called ‘ ABL ‘ by those Bay Street guys, can even be used as a loan to buy a business.

If you’re looking to get the right balance of liquidity and risk coupled with the flexibility to grow your business seek out and speak to a trusted, credible and experienced Canadian business financing advisor with a track record of business finance success who can assist you with your funding needs.

Bridging the Gap Between Search Engine Spiders and Humans

Search engine spiders are – in a way – the lifeblood of the internet. Without them, we wouldn’t have search engines. Without search engines, nobody could find your website, nor could you locate 99%+ of the internet either.

And yet, these little spiders – however necessary they are – don’t by any means paint the full picture of the business behind the website it’s spidering. All a spider can do is read the content of your site via the HTML you provide it. Therefore, we’re told to develop “search engine friendly” websites – ones with a good structure of headline tags, and using keywords that explicitly state what our website is about.

Of course, links play a part too. Authoritative links pointing to your site act as “votes” that search engines count in your favor. This helps them build a reasonable picture of the quality of your content. However, it’s often the case that there’s a massive gap between how search engines see your website, and the quality of service or product you provide. Let’s look at this gap a little closer, and see how it can be filled.

The Gap
Let’s imagine a business that established itself 25 years ago, and has provided a consistently high quality of drainage services in all of that time. They have repeat customers who don’t think twice about booking their services every year. To all intents and purposes, they are highly trusted, successful business. And yet, they are ranked very low in Google for all their main keywords. What’s gone wrong here? This “gap” in perception is because the website this business owns has very few (or even zero) authoritative links, poor on-page optimization, and poor content. Search engine spiders can’t see past these metrics. No business has a “right” to ranking well just because they provide an excellent “in real life” product or service.

How to Bridge This Gap?
There is a symbiotic relationship between website owners and search engines. Both need each other. This is why Google Search Console exists. It’s a means to allow the website owner to help Google better understand their website, and help bridge this gap.

That’s only the first step though. Having your site audited by an on-page optimization expert can help you fine-tune your website page structure, your URLs, your navigation, your titles, your content.

Where search engine spiders fail to see signals of trust like how well established your business is (even if the website is 6 months old), a human reviewer CAN. Third party services like human-review directories and customer review services can REALLY help close the gap.

Human-review directories
A high-quality human-review niche directory will look for signals of trust found on your website. These are often too subtle for a search engine spider to “join the dots” – but a discerning human can. For example, if a website claims to be a member of a particular association, it’s possible to search for the company name on the association’s website. The same can be done for company registration numbers too. If a company has been established for many years, and they show this on a company history page, a human reviewer can build up a picture of the company’s progress through the years. Moreover, it’s the aggregation of all of these things that help a human reviewer build a solid picture of the business. A search engine spider will not be able to see the nuances a human can.

Suggested article: Human-reviewed, Established Niche Directories

Review services
Your customer base is your ultimate cheerleaders (or perhaps, whistle-blowers!). They trusted your product or service, and they can write about their experiences via review services like Trustpilot. These help people get some idea of the quality of product or service you provide.

Suggested article: The Purpose of b2blistings.org

Online Reputation
Both human-review directories and review services can be used to give some proof as to the reputation you deserve online. When someone does a search for your brand name, and you’re listed in human-review directories and under review services, these signals of trust can be found in the search – helping prospective new customers gain some trust in your business. Search engines will also be visiting these directories and review services too, so it helps them get a better picture of your business as well.

Suggested article: Other Website Review Services We Run

Conclusion
It doesn’t matter how good your product or service is in “the real world”. Online, you start from zero and work your way up. It doesn’t mean that having a great product or service doesn’t help you. It does – very much. It’s just you have to jump through the same hoops as every other website owner to get yourself established. Once you are established and easily found, you’ll find your old friend (word-of-mouth marketing) was online this whole time. You’ll discover that your online presence will take on a life of its own as people start recommending you on social media and their own websites. It just takes time and effort to get to that point.

Designer Baby Clothes Can Be Affordable

One of the biggest trends in fashion today is designer clothes for babies. Babies no longer have to dress in just pastel pajamas, or be limited by what is available to the masses at the local mart. Now babies can also wear one-of-a-kind (or nearly so) couture and boutique fashions, just like adults.Some popular adult wear designers have also introduced a line for babies, such as Ralph Lauren, Lily Pulitzer, Tommy Hilfiger and Guess. These designer baby fashions can usually be found in the better departments stores, such as Lord and Taylor, Nordstrom’s and Macy’s. Department stores also feature other top brands of designer baby clothes like Little Me, Flapdoodles, Greendog, Icky Baby, First Impression, Little Bitty and Baby Nay to name just a few.Some designers offer their clothes through their own catalog’s and websites. A leader in this type of designer baby clothes is Hanna Anderson, who comes out with several new lines each season. Each line is available for infant through adult, with the adult and children clothes coordinating in each line. This designer has a certain number of clothing design styles that she is well known for, especially the Play Dresses with tights and leggings, and the organic cotton Jeeper Creepers and Wiggle Pants, with new colors and prints becoming available each season. At the end of each season, many items can be purchased at a great clearance price.Another type of designer baby wear is the brand name clothing found in their own stores in shopping malls, especially Gymboree and The Children’s Place. Prices may range from very inexpensive to quite pricey, depending on the store. Gymboree also comes out with several new lines each season, featuring several pieces and accessories available in each line. Gymboree has inspired a whole community of collectors and resellers who offer websites to keep track of all of the different lines, and people trade in order to get pieces in particular sets. Making purchases at Gymboree earns “Gymbucks” that offer 50% discounts on purchases over $50. The great thing about Gymbucks is that they can even be used on discounted sale merchandise. Some people will give away their Gymbucks if they are close to expiring – so check your local classified ads. There are also several outlets located throughout the U.S.Finally there are the “boutique fashions”. These are the designers who often design nothing but baby clothes, and their fashions may only be found at special baby boutiques. Baby boutique fashions run the gamut from widely available mass-produced fashions to hand-made unique specialty items. Some of the popular boutique brands include MishMish, CachCach, City Threads, Jack and Lily, Devi Baby, Dogwood, and Flowers by Zoe.The great thing about designer baby clothes is their resale value. Baby clothes are sometimes worn just once or twice, but the lower cost brands are so readily available that they don’t have the same resalable quality. You may be able to recoup a couple dollars or fifty cents at a garage sale, but when you purchase certain designer fashions, you are making an investment that you may be able to get your money back on. First, purchase your baby’s designer wear, preferably on sale. After your little one has worn it a few times, you may very well be able to turn around and resell it for a good price, getting some of your money back. That makes the final cost of the item comparable to that of the mainstream brands. This is also a good way for parents who think they can’t afford designer clothes for their babies to get very fashionable items, by buying gently used clothes at designer baby clothing consignment shops, and online at places such as e-Bay.