Is Main Street on the Road Back?

Small-business owners are nothing if not resilient. For example: Sandesh, the proprietor of our corner store. The guy gets robbed at gunpoint and does he sit around and mope? No. He keeps right on selling beer and cigarettes. (Of course, we were next in line.)

Here’s another example: borrowing by small businesses has bounced back bigtime. The Thomson Reuters/PayNet Small Business Lending Index, which gauges financing for small firms, was up 26 percent in May from a year ago.

That’s a record increase. The index hasn’t been this high since July 2008, two months before the economy capsized. Better yet, PayNet also released numbers showing small-business loan delinquencies and defaults down in May from April.

Still some potholes. Meanwhile, another new survey, the Small Business Credit Sales Report by the Capital Access Network, shows it’s not entirely full speed ahead on Main Street. The report says debit and credit card sales at small businesses were down 3.4 percent in second quarter 2011 from second quarter 2010. Retail and service providers reported a drop of 6 percent.

This is in contrast to card use overall, which is up throughout the U.S. “Consumers appear to be spending more on their cards but just not at Main Street businesses,” said Capital Access Network CEO Glenn Goldman.

Are any small businesses doing well? Restaurants saw a slight rise in card sales. They reported a 0.1 percent increase in second quarter 2011 from second quarter 2010. But people aren’t going to expensive places. Card sales at “fine dining” spots were off 4.4 percent, while those eateries where the average bill is less than $25 reported a 2.8 percent uptick. (Don’t you hate those clowns at Arby’s, holding up the line paying with a credit card?)

Women are better businessmen. Here’s another interesting takeaway from the Capital Access Network report: the numbers show women-owned small businesses are doing better than those owned by men. While card sales at male-owned small businesses were off by 3.6 percent, card sales at small firms owned by women were down just 1.5 percent.

We’re not sure why this is so. Because women tend to use credit cards more often than men? And tend to use them at women’s stores, which tend to be owned by women?

If you wanted to draw that conclusion, you’d be supported by at least some of the data. A 2006 study by Experian shows that women have more bank cards than men and use them more often.

Unless it’s mating season. Researchers who examined women’s “preferences in mating relationships” reported in the academic journal Evolutionary Psychology that “males who are relatively higher in mating effort may have a greater tendency to maximize their display of economic power, saving little and even spending beyond their capacity through the use of credit.”

And why would men exhibit such odd behavior? Because, say the research authors, women like to get hitched to rich guys. “In a study of female law students, not one would consider an attractive man with low socioeconomic status for marriage, although some would agree to have sex with him. They always preferred marriage with a high-socioeconomic-status man, whether he was attractive or not.”

(We’d never marry a woman lawyer anyway. So there.)