National Small Business week kicks off next week. And good news just came in for one West Michigan City that may want to celebrate. The personal-finance website WalletHub just released its report on 2018’s Best Small Cities to Start a Business. And coming in at number one, is Holland, Michigan.
“So, we actually looked at more than 12-hundred small sized cities across the country, Holland beat out all of them, in a lot of those key metrics.”
And there were at least 18 key metrics according to WalletHub analyst, Jill Gonzalez. She says Holland was really hard to beat in two out of the three categories: access to resources and business costs.
“So, Holland actually does very well in that second category, business costs. A lot cheaper to get started in Holland, than in other cities, even within the state. Office space affordability, pretty cheap right now, labor costs, cheaper so that measures the median annual income. Corporate tax rate is a little bit better for most cities, but Holland in particular. And access to resources, all bode really well for Holland.”
Holland wasn’t the only West Michigan City to score well on the WalletHub report. Kentwood ranked very well as it relates to affordable office space.
“Kentwood ranked 35th overall, so still out of 1200 plus cities, a great number and it actually came in number one for one metric in particular and that was the cheapest office space right now. Just look at square footage, you can get something for 7 to 9 dollars, obviously a lot more affordable than if you wanted to start a business out in California. So office space, obviously when financing is a bit tighter, is very important to look at and Kentwood ranked number one there, which also helped boost it into the top 50 overall.”
Gonzalez says they plan on also taking a similar look at big cities as well.
