E-Commerce or Electronic Commerce

E-commerce refers to commercial transaction or economic activity that took place on the Internet. E-commerce can be interchanged with the term e-business. It simply means the buying and selling of goods and services online, instead of doing business at a physical location.

Why E-Commerce

The main reason is that, unlike a physical store, e-commerce knows no boundaries of time and distance. An entrepreneur can run an online store from a remote island in the South Pacific and a buyer can purchase products or services from a world-class city like Toronto 24 hours a day – crossing the global boundaries and time restriction.

E-commerce offers other advantages such as:

- Easy to start up a new business
- Often requires a lot lower capital than a physical business
- The convenience it offers for buyers and sellers
- Ability to offer cheaper prices than physical business due to its lower operational cost

Is My Success Guaranteed If I Start E-Commerce?

Like any business, e-commerce has its ups and downs, and it not guarantee that your business will not fail. Before starting an online business (or any kind of business), always do your research. Your success or failure will largely depend on what type of services and products you are offering and how efficiently you can serve your customers at reasonable prices.

How Secure is E-Commerce

In the past, security was an issue while commencing e-commerce. However, technology has solved that problem by creating SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encrypted secure transactions. Also, most credit card companies are guaranteeing that online shoppers will not be responsible in case of fraudulent charges.

What Does The Future Hold for E-Commerce?

E-commerce has revolutionized the 21st century and yet this is just the beginning. The rise of mobile e-commerce (e-commerce from smart phones) is still a newer concept and will increase at a steady pace in the next few years. However, due to market saturation and fierce competition, the key to survival will be to offer innovative products and exceptional customer service skills at rock-bottom prices.

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Buying an Established Business

Entrepreneurs like to build businesses from the ground up by developing ideas and putting the time and effort into it. However, it may not always be realistic to build something from scratch – especially when time is of the essence and ideas seem to not be making sense. Buying an existing business gives some advantages over starting a brand new one. For example, you already have a customer base, a setup procedure that runs the business, and its reputation. On the downside, there is a lot of money to be spent, and you may run into something unexpected, causing you lots of headaches and financial loss. Today, I am going to talk about a few things you should consider before buying a business to make your new venture a smooth and a successful one.

Choose The Right Type of Business – Do not just buy something you are not familiar with just because you think this is where the money is. Buy something that interests you and make sure you have the required skills and knowledge to stick with it for a long time. It is likely that you will be putting in long hours year after year without any break or vacation in your business. If you buy something that does not interest you, for sure you will give it up in just a few months. Also, don’t forget how relevant the business is to your line of experience. If you never drove a taxi cab before or set foot in a garage, it makes no sense to start “Jimmy’s Taxi Cab” – because you are bound to be a failure.

Know You Limits – Have a clear idea of exactly when you can buy, what you can afford to buy, and where you can location wise without constraining your budget.

Get professional Help – It is unlikely that you will know the ins and outs of buying a business. Hiring a professional such as a business broker not only will help you to save time, but will also avoid the unnecessary hassle you need to go through when buying a business. Some of the issues a broker can pinpoint: if the business is hiding anything or has any financial problems, they can inform you on the latest rules and regulations, negotiate with the seller to save you money, help with obtaining licenses and permits to operate the business lawfully, and so on.

Some resources – Here are some websites to help you with your research finding a business.

- International Business Brokers Association

- Biz Buy Sell

- Business Broker

- Business Sell Canada

- Business For Sell Canada

- Biz Match

- Canadian Biz Mart

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Steps to Starting or Settingup a Corporation

In Canada, setting up a corporation or incorporating a business is a straightforward process. Depending on the nature of your business and how accurately you file required documents, it is possible to start your new corporation within 1 – 2 business days if you submit your documents online. For example, my own federally incorporated business entity A Dawn Dot Net Corp. was approved in slightly more than 24 hours. Today, I am going to discuss how you can start a corporation in Canada in simple words.

Although there are many small steps involved incorporating a business, at the end it comes down to these three major steps you need to complete to start a corporation in Canada.

Pick a Name – You need to decide on a name and even before that you need to know whether your corporation is going to be a federally or provincially incorporated corporation. A federally incorporated business can do business anywhere in Canada. A provincially incorporated business will have to be physically in the province where it was incorporated. Once you know what you would like your corporation to be called, you will have to search for your name availability using the NUANS (Newly Upgraded Automated Name Search) and obtain a NUANS name search report.

Complete Articles of Incorporation – These are the documents that you file with the authority setting out to provide the legal structure of the corporation – in other words, Articles of Incorporation describe a corporation’s purpose, rules, and regulations. For example, how many directors there will be. Where the registered office will be located. Where the remaining property goes if corporation winds up. What classes and how many shares the corporation can issue. Can these shares be transferred or should there be restrictions so the corporation remains private? And so on. Articles of Incorporation are what make each corporation unique. Articles of Incorporation are also known as Certificates of Incorporation.

Submit Documents and Payment – The last step is to submit the documents mentioned above and any other necessary documents along with the payment to Corporation Canada or provincial authority.

Last Word

Although it is possible and may not be difficult to do everything by yourself online, I recommend you seek the expertise and assistance of a qualified professional. While setting up my corporation, I noticed that it would have been difficult for me to fill up some of the forms and submit everything online fast like the way my accountant was able to do. There are so many rules and regulations that I could not have been possibly known, had my accountant not mentioned those to me.

Some Helpful Links

Here are some links you may find useful:

Corporations Canada Home

Corporations Canada Frequently Ask Questions

Corporations Canada pdf Guide to Federal Incorporation

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