With a vibrant economy and positive demographics, Okotoks had everything the owners of Why Weight were looking for when planning their new business.
Kristen and Paul Gilmour moved to town from Comox on Vancouver Island and opened the health and weight loss service on Oct. 1.
With family living in town, they were already familiar with the community, but after a little research they felt Okotoks was the right place to set up shop.
“It was the highest median household income in a place to live with over 10,000 people in all of Canada,” said Paul, Why Weight's business manager. “For us, we do serve a little bit more well-to-do clientele, so that made a lot of sense for this market.”
The Gilmours were part of continued growth of Okotoks' business market in 2014.
The Town ended the year with a total of 1,824 business licences issued for all categories, from short-term to yearlong and in-town and out-of-town businesses, up 4.8 per cent over 2013. In 2013, the number of business licences grew by 3.5 per cent.
After factoring in the number of businesses that closed or relocated, Okotoks ended the year with a net increase of 2.3 per cent.
“It was pretty positive, we’re still net ahead,” said Shane Olson, Okotoks economic development manager.
It continues a growth trend Okotoks' business community has seen in recent years with a 32 per cent increase in the number of businesses since 2007.
In 2014, there were 1,219 businesses located in Okotoks, with 564 ‘store-front’ businesses with a physical location, an increase of 4.1 per cent over 2013. Okotoks also ended the year with 656 home-based businesses. The growth of home-based businesses slowed last year, only rising by 0.9 per cent.
According to Olson, one theory behind the slowing growth in home-based businesses is that the Town is starting to run out of developed land for new housing, with another being more people finding jobs as the provincial economy strengthened last year.
“There could be a lot of explanations for that anomaly, it’s kind of a lower growth rate,” he said.
The town's growing business community also helped to create more jobs.
Olson said there were 424 new jobs declared with the new businesses. The job growth was down by 25 positions compared to 2013.
He expects the growth to continue this year with a number of new commercial and business properties being developed, including additional retail space in the Westmount area, a 30,000 square-foot industrial building in the Okotoks Business Park and new buildings in the Southbank Business Park.
“I would say it was a good year in 2014… with steady growth and a number of new construction projects in the ground or underway that are going to create a strong 2015,” he said.
Although the first month at Why Weight was admittedly slow, owner Kristen Gilmour said business took off after the Light Up Okotoks celebrations in November and has continued to grow since then, particularly in the New Year.
“They finally saw us and it was really busy,” she said. “It was great because they could find out what we had, the different things that we sold.”
Kristen also said Okotoks’ business community supports itself, with clients often being referred from other businesses in town.
“The support from all the different places in town has been amazing,” she said. “Everyone we talk to is about keeping business in town.”
Business has also been good at K2 Body Sculpting, which opened its doors in the downtown area in April 2014.
“The first year’s been good, there’s definitely a lot of interest in our first few months and quite a big growth of clientele over the last year,” said owner Lindsey Jordan.
Having lived in Okotoks for two years, she said she felt there was an opportunity offering therapies and treatments that aren't available in town.
“We just looked around to see if there was anything like us and there wasn’t, so that was the biggest appeal to us,” said Jordan.
