Off the Ground Blog

Meet Marco Pasqua! Entrepreneur Profile Highlights
Marco Pasqua is a speaker, writer, and entrepreneur. He sits down to talk with us about founding the CUBE Principle in Vancouver, BC., and his journey from having a concept to creation and explore challenges and lessons along the way.

Industry Overview: Florist Shop Business
A florist shop is a retail establishment that sells cut flowers and ornamental plants. The floral trade involves activities such as flower care, flower arranging, floral design, merchandising, and often flower delivery. Florist shops are an ever popular industry. As such, we want to provide you with snapshots of the current industry overview, trends and challenges as well as provide some research resources for those interested in the florist shop business.

Calling All Small Businesses: Apply for a BC Tech Co-op Grant!
Small businesses know the value of having a co-op student on their team – they bring in a fresh perspective, innovative ideas, and an eager-to-learn attitude at an affordable cost. But what if there was a way to make hiring a co-op even more valuable for your company?

Industry Overview: Wedding Planning
For engaged couples, staging a wedding can be both exciting and stressful. To help manage the process and to ensure a picture-perfect (stress-free) wedding, hiring a wedding planner is a smart idea. Wedding planning is an ever popular industry and one of the most searched guides on our website. As such, we want to provide you with a current industry overview, trends and challenges, as well as provide some research resources for those interested in the wedding planning business.

Vendor Tips for Holiday Markets
Last year, we posted about Ten Holiday Markets in British Columbia. This year, we thought we would cover our top tips for vendors to make your craft fair or holiday market experience a success.

Industry Overview: Nonprofits
The non-profit industry is a diverse industry composed of entities focusing on technology, education, health, the arts and many other areas. There are several terms used to refer to non-profits, such as charities, not-for-profit and social enterprise, making it somewhat confusing to figure out how your non-profit idea should be categorized.

Rural Entrepreneurship and Innovation
In September, the Small Business Accelerator librarian, Adena Brons, attended the Canadian Rural Revitalization Foundations's 2017 conference, "Different by Design." She traveled to Nelson B.C. for two days of learning and discussing the themes of workforces of tomorrow, our changing environment, creating connections, and communities of opportunity. Rural entrepreneurship is dynamic and innovative, as rural small businesses and entrepreneurs create their own solutions and new ideas for the challenges of the 21st century.

Focus on...Small Business Week 2017
As the days get shorter, we celebrate Small Business Week 2017 with our partners at David Lam Library at UBC. Business Librarian Irena Trebic has picked a list of business books that can help guide you, whatever stage your business is in. Business Start-up in the Digital Age by Learn2succeed.com Inc

Top Growth Industries in BC [Infographic]
Growth is happening in British Columbia, but where? This infographic covers the top 5 growing industries based on the British Columbia Small Business Profile 2016 Click the image below to see a larger version.

Help UBC Library support your venture!
Call for British Columbia participants in UBC Library entrepreneurship research habits and information needs study!