Trade show attracts several businesses, entrepreneurs to promote regional opportunities

By ANNA SMITH Local Journalism Initiative on October 25, 2024.

asmith@medicinehatnews.com

Numerous small business owners and entrepreneurs made their way out to the Cypress Centre on Wednesday for a once-a-year opportunity to have nearly all their potential supports in one place.

This is the second year that Community Futures Entre-Corp has hosted its Business Growth Tradeshow, says Tracy Stroud, Apex Regional Innovation network manager for southeast Alberta.

“We started doing this event last year when we realized that a lot of service providers, those government funded service providers for business, serve our area, but they actually don’t have offices in southeast Alberta,” said Stroud.

As such, they invited these different government organizations and not-for-profits to travel down to Medicine Hat for the day, in order to help connect with various businesses which may benefit from their services, such as CETAC-WEST, a nonprofit based out of Calgary that looks to help enterprises in the development of environmental and clean technologies.

“We’ve been around for about 30 years, and our key differentiator over these 30 years is that we’ve built a large network of mentors,” said project manager Razvan Rusescu. “These are all former clients. Now they’re coming back, and they’re willing to help some of the younger entrepreneurs that are going through some of our services.”

The event featured 35-plus exhibitors, from government agencies and organizations from further afield to familiar faces, such as the local chamber of commerce.

“While they’re here, businesses can talk to them, make that face-to-face connection and learn more about those services,” said Stroud. “It also helps to speed up some of those wait times; often when companies apply for a program, they fill out a form and wait, but this allows for that face-to-face connection and to start that relationship, to ask their questions in person.”

It is an opportunity that Community Futures Entre-Corp and APEX are happy to continue to offer each year as long as the interest remains, says Stroud, and they hope to continue to meet needs in the regional business community.

“If there’s interest for a different type of format, we’re also open to that feedback,” said Stroud. “We’re pretty nimble in the things that we provide. If people want to see certain service providers, or a different delivery, we’re happy to have that conversation, too.”

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