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Small Business Resources

Resources from the Bruno Library that can help you with your small business

Company Information

D&B Hoovers
Search for information on both domestic and international companies.  Contains data about competitors, financial information (up to 10 years worth of historical financial data for public companies), history/background, primary products etc.  Very easy to use to find a single company or generate a list of similar companies.

Reference Solutions
Great tool for finding information about private companies located within a certain geographic area.

Business Plans Handbook (Bruno Library Reference HD62.7 .B865)
18 volume set of reference books with actual business plans from hundreds of difference business types. 

SimplyAnalytics
Get an area analysis of types of businesses within an area.  Additionally, you can generate market information on potential customers.

Industry Information

IBISWorld
Contains over 700 detailed industry reports.  Browse the items by scrolling down the page, or enter the name of an industry (or company within an industry) to get a list that meets your criteria.

Each report contains sections including industry outlook, lifecycle, products & markets and competitive landscape.  Many charts can be downloaded directly into excel and entire reports can be downloaded as pdf documents.

Mintel Reports
Mintel reports provide market information on markets for consumer products, travel, lifestyles and leisure. Each report combines data & analysis of the competitive landscape, market-share analysis and consumer profiles.

News

Factiva
Seaches thousands of global newspapers, including some of the prominent names such as the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and New York Times.

LexisNexis Academic
In addition to searching thousands of global newspapers (including foreign language sources) LexisNexis also searches radio and television transcripts, blogs, country information and legal documents.