MerchantCircle at San Francisco's Small Business Week

MerchantCircle helped sponsor Small Business Week in San Francisco this week is support of thousands of small businesses in the City by the Bay.



Highlights of the week include:



Monday night, MerchantCircle visited the Flavors of San Francisco hosted by Mayor Gavin Newsom and the SBA District Director Mark Quinn. This gala event was attended by thousands of local small business owners along with leaders from all of the top merchant associations. Some of our top participating restaurants picks include Ike's Place, Lotta's Bakery, Pacific Catch, and Gastronaut.

MerchantCircle's Julie Craft with North Beach Chamber of Commerce President Martin Kirkwood



Wednesday, the MerchantCircle team participated at the Small Business Conference at SFSU where thousands of small business owners attended workshops and lectures designed to provide them with resources, tips and practical advice from experts to help them launch and grow their businesses. The workshop topics ranged all of the way from online marketing to contracting to financial strategies to retirement planning.



The MerchantCircle team was instrumental in helping thousands of small businesses to set up a business listing at MerchantCircle.com as a first step in promoting their business online. MerchantCircle forged strategic alliances with many of the top San Francisco Merchant Associations including the SBA, SF Chamber of Commerce, BizTechDay, and North Beach Chamber of Commerce with the partnership goal of helping all of their members to stand out from the competition by utilizing the power of the MerchantCircle business networking platform.

Thursday night's 2010 Business After Hours Grand Expo at AT&T Park was the highlight of the week. Hundreds of small businesses came together for a night of networking, showcasing, great food and lots of fun! The MerchantCircle team was excited to meet so many local, small business owners.



All new businesses that signed up for FREE at MerchantCircle this week were automatically entered into the MerchantCircle iPad contest. Check back to our blog early next week when the 2 lucky winners will be announced!

Bringing MerchantCircle Across Borders and Overseas

For many years we've been asked the question of just when we would see MerchantCircle's platform expand beyond the borders of the United States? We're pleased to finally be able to answer that with a resounding TODAY!  Well, in reality it was late last week, but today we are happy to formally announce our new beta versions of the site that are operating in Canada, the UK and Australia.  We are very excited for the opportunity that is present in each of these countries and are currently in talks with potential partners in each region to help maximize the exposure for the platform.



Consider the following statistics about the prevalence of small business in our new locations:



- According to the UK Department for Business Innovation and Skills, 99.3 percent of the nearly 5 million registered businesses are small (0 to 49 employees).

- In Australia, 96 percent of the 2 million businesses in the country have less that 20 people, as reported by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

- In Canada, 57 percent of businesses have only 1 to 4 employees based on reports from the Business Register of Statistics Canada.



We already have some early adopters that are pretty excited about us being in their country.  Lindy Asimus, owner of Design Business Engineering in Newcastle, NSW, Australia told us “Fantastic! MerchantCircle Australia! This is the very best news for small business owners in Australia. The tools that MerchantCircle provides are like nothing else available in this country for small business. Now there is absolutely no excuse for businesses not to be online.”



You can read our full announcement here. And this is just the beginning. Don't be surprised to see MerchantCircle sites for other major countries later in 2010.



MerchantCircle UK - http://uk.merchantcircle.com/

MerchantCircle Australia - http://www.merchantcircle.com.au/

MerchantCircle Canada - http://www.merchantcircle.ca/

New Team Members Join MerchantCircle

We're excited to announce two new members of our team started this week. Mark Munroe has returned to MerchantCircle as the Director of Search Audience. Mark previously worked at MerchantCircle in the early days of the company's formation in 2005. He brings more than a decade of product management and product marketing experience to MerchantCircle and will work on helping smaller merchants gain more exposure online. Most notably, leveraging the enormous amount of unique content created on the MerchantCircle platform to attract more consumers to more merchants. During the last few years, he has spent time at RealTravel as Director of Product Management, as E-Commerce Product Manager at Dealix and as Director of Online Marketing at Vayama.com.



Robyn Hannah has also joined the company to lead our community relations efforts. As Sr. Manager of Community, Robyn will work to expand MerchantCircle's national community of merchants by developing and implementing programs that increase merchant engagement. Additionally, Hannah will act as a merchant advocate to ensure continued customer satisfaction. She previously served as a marketing communications manager at YouSendIt where she was responsible for corporate communications, social media and promoting brand identity.



You can read all about their backgrounds and favorite local businesses on our official press release.





As our team continues to expand you might be interested in joining us. Visit our Jobs section on the site to see the opportunities we have to come aboard.