Starved of capital, small businesses in rural NC are fading away

Along the Roanoke River, economic developers and policymakers in Martin County were not strategically planning a pitch to land Amazon’s HQ, nor were they particularly confident that they could lure Apple to the quaint streets of Williamston. Local leaders have long embraced the fact that their economies depended not on the big splash of major retailers, but the formation, retention, and expansion of small businesses. It is in this context that the NC Rural Center’s report on Small Business Dynamism in North Carolina, detailing the long term decline of business formation in rural North Carolina, is particularly distressing.