We’re Hearing from Businesses. Now We Need the Data.
It seems like nearly every conversation with a local business owner or employer right now includes some version of the same question: How are things going?
And increasingly, the answer is complicated.
Businesses continue to navigate higher costs for goods, services and supplies. Many are watching the impact of fewer Canadian visitors traveling south into Whatcom County. Bellingham employers are navigating a higher local minimum wage. Healthcare and health insurance costs continue to rise. And for many businesses, these challenges aren’t happening one at a time … they’re stacking on top of one another.
We hear these concerns regularly through conversations with our members. But individual conversations, as valuable as they are, only tell us part of the story.
That’s why the Bellingham Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Downtown Bellingham Partnership are partnering on a new survey of local businesses.
Our goal is straightforward: we want to better understand what businesses are experiencing right now.
What pressures are having the greatest impact? Are revenues changing? Are costs affecting hiring, hours, pricing or investment decisions? Are businesses seeing changes in customer traffic? And perhaps most importantly, what should community leaders understand about the realities of operating a business in Whatcom County today?
Good advocacy requires more than anecdotes. It requires information.
The results of this survey will help us identify trends across our business community, better understand where challenges are concentrated, and provide more useful information when we engage with local leaders, elected officials and community partners.
It will also help us distinguish between issues that may be affecting a handful of businesses and those that are creating broader challenges across industries and throughout our community.
That’s why participation matters.
Whether your business is having a difficult year, a record year or something somewhere in between, we want to hear from you. A strong response will give us a clearer and more representative picture of our local economy and help ensure that when we speak on behalf of the business community, we’re doing so with real information behind us.
Please take a few minutes to complete the survey.
Thank you for helping us better understand the state of business in Whatcom County. The more we know, the better equipped we are to advocate, convene and work toward solutions that help businesses and our broader community succeed.
Guy Occhiogrosso
President/CEO
Posted September 2, 2026