Happy Australia Day

It is Australia Day today and all Australians living downunder or as expats have a good reason to celebrate.

Our nation, as young as we are in comparison to some Europeans is a great melting pot of all nations, in 2009 for the first time, immigrants from China represented the largest community entering our great land.

Sadly only, Australia Day usually means, that the summer holidays are over. Back to work, use your newly made networking contacts - all of us…

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Happy New Year to all our ZaaBiz members

The ZaaBiz Team wishes all of our members and members to come a happy and prosperous New Year - may 2010 bring all the excitement and thrill needed to be successful in your respective businesses.

Make 2010 Your Year for Business Networking

ZaaBiz has now been in business for two years and we are very proud of our achievements. More than 150,000 members from AustralAsia use the platform to network with their business contacts. Our strongest followings are in Australia and India with many thousand members on board that came in from Singapore and Dubai in the past months.

Keep on networking on ZaaBiz - we are empowering business networks!

Your ZaaBiz Team

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Our next business networking event in Sydney’s CBD

As this month’s event is sponsored by Perpetual, we’ve decided to let everyone attend this one event for FREE. But RSVP early, as seats are limited.

Business Networking in Sydney

This month we’re asking you to take a moment out of your everyday business or professional life to hear how you can make the most of your personal or business’s financial position from the market recovery. Our event partner Infusion Networking Group has chosen to collaborate with the experts of Perpetual to give business owners, professionals and entrepreneurs a great opportunity to be well informed.

Earlier this year, you probably learnt how to survive tough economic times, now discover what happens when the market starts recovering and whether it’s time you re-enter the markets.

When markets recover – wealth flows to the well informed - is it time to re-enter the markets?

WHEN: Wednesday 21 October, 5:30pm, for 6:00pm start – 9:00pm

Guest speaker and Topic Expert ‘MATTHEW SHERWOOD’ (Investment Markets Research, Perpetual)

THE VENUE: Level 12, 123 Pitt Street, Sydney (Corner Angel Place)

THE COST: FREE (normally $25)* - includes drinks, light refreshments, presentation and networking opportunities

BOOKINGS ARE ESSENTIAL: As seats will be limited please RSVP by 15 October to info@infusion.org.au

Meet many interesting business people from Sydney and beyond.

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Real Estate slump is over in Australia

Melbourne Skyline

We have all seen the queues of mostly young people lined up in front of the houses for auction in the past weekends. Tomorrow, the first part of the ‘first home owner‘ bonus will disappear - the 30th of September marks the last day of this highly popular boost to the real estate sector. Where we have seen worried faces in the industry before when such extinction of government help was on the horizon a few months ago, this time it is all different.

The real estate industry has been a happy one in these past weeks and continues to do so: Prices went up in most of the cities, and the outlook for Australia’s real estate sector couldn’t be better.

The RBA reported today that average annual population growth Down Under has been 340,000 over the last five years, up from 240,000 over the prior five-year period, an increase of around 40 per cent. “Yet the number of dwellings we have built has not risen. Commencements of new housing over the past five years have averaged around 150,000 dwellings, versus around 155,000 over the previous five-year period. It would not be surprising if this was one factor that had contributed to the increase in the cost of housing over the past decade,” states a report published by the RBA today.

We can see a new boom for the housing industry arise: the real estate slump is officially declared over.

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Teens let spending power shine

With Australia getting some positive economic results this week, it seems that it’s the teen demographic that have been propping up many of Australia’s industries – namely electronics and fashion. Around half of Australia’s 15-19 year olds are engaged in casual or part time employment and, as many of them have no other financial commitments their money is getting poured right back into the economy. For supporting evidence, just look toward the results electronics store JB Hi Fi have been reporting recently.

Meanwhile Aussie blogger Erica Bartle has been writing on The Punch about how the teens are in charge of the fashion world. Social networking and blogging sites are setting the agenda for all things ‘cool’; MySpace favourites are on the radio, tweens are on the screens (think Twilight and Harry Potter), and the same 16 year olds are heading advertising campaigns for some of the world’s biggest luxury fashion brands.

It’s no wonder that the younguns have taken so well to holding up the economy – they’re the ones seen out and about in all the best clothes, in all the magazines, having the high life pushed on them through every media source available. If you need an example of the way kids, tweens and teens are being taught to spend, just watch an episode of Gossip Girl.

In Australia at least, these patterns of spending seem to be working in our favour.

Signing off,

Louise.

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Speed networking in Bondi - it’s only for business

Bondi & Districts Chamber of Commerce is holding their first ever ‘SPEED NETWORKING NIGHT’ next Tuesday 1st September and it promises to be an excellent night of networking, pitching, promoting and more!

networking in Bondi

The idea is for everyone to personally meet everyone else in attendance and promote your business.

“These speed networking events can be fun, but they are hard work too”, explains Michael Brecht, partner at ZaaBiz. “There is usually not a lot of time for each talk and you need to be well prepared with a strong 1-2 minute pitch of what you do”.

So, here you go - off to Bondi on the first of the month.

The Host: Bondi & Districts Chamber of Commerce

Start Time: Tuesday, September 1 at 6:15pm
End Time: Tuesday, September 1 at 9:00pm

Where: Depot Cafe

Your ZaaBiz Team

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Wine Exports to China

Many of our members on ZaaBiz are involved in the wine business world. We found this interesting article on downunderwines - explaining the dos and don’ts of exporting to this big new wine market.

Wine exports to China

Let us know what you think.

Are you an exporter to China?

What are your experiences?

This is a big market and it might be very tempting to export to China, just be aware of the risks too.

Anabel

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Bringing the girls down an inch or two

Unions in the UK have called for an end to women wearing high heels in the workplace.

In the articles I read on the matter, it seemed to be unclear as to whether the issue was one of health, preventing foot and back issues, or of some feministic impulse, stopping women wearing ‘degrading’ footwear.

The UK Trade Union advocates women wearing ‘sensible’ shoes, no higher than 25mm, and whilst I understand the pain of wearing a stiletto heel for an extended period of time, I also think that (outside OH&S laws and maintaining ‘appropriate’ business attire) allowing choice and diversity of opinion is the key to creating a happy and productive workplace.

While I tend to shun heels for work - mainly because I choose to walk to work and would rather not lug around a spare pair - I thought I’d ask some people who wore heels around the office for their opinion, and therefore took the story to a few women in business based in Sydney.

The first person I asked, like me, advocated choice, “I don’t think they should be banned, women make the choice to wear them, unless they’re part of a uniform.”

The second stated that she wore them for a bit of extra height around the office – even sighting a study which showed that salaries go up with your height! Her opinion? “Ladies, get your feet into those sky-high heels and get a pay rise!”

Signing off,

Louise.

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Sunday Papers (but not as you now them)

Last week Rupert Murdoch announced that the days of free news online will soon be over and News Corp will soon start charging readers’ for access to online news content. Britain’s Sunday Times is tipped to be the guinea pig for the scheme, although the specifics are all fairly vague at this stage.

On the News Corp owned news.com.au Murdoch is reported as saying that, “an industry that gives away its content is cannibalising its ability to produce good reporting.”

This really is a landmark decision in the world of online journalism – which is a medium that, in many ways, is still trying to find its place and best method of delivery. I have been to many talks this year, which looked at the uneasy place of free news sources and the future of journalism, especially with the existence of sites such as Google News and Wikinews. The current media situation is such that newspaper circulations are dropping like a lead balloon, but due to the increasing modes of access to print news online, especially the ability to access publications internationally, newspapers have a higher readership that ever before.

I’ll be waiting eagerly to see how this plan is implemented, as not only does it impact on the people who work in the media in Australia and the rest of the world, but it impacts on the ways in which we learn about what’s going on around us, and how we remember the events that shape our world.

Signing Off,

Louise.

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Raising the wage

Where do you stand on the latest debates over wage rises?

I’m fairly new out of university, so the cuts from opening up my little envelope minimum wages at the end of the week whilst working long days in retail, dealing with some not-so-nice customers, still run fairly deep. I can only imagine the difficulty of fending for more people than myself on that amount of money.

However, I’ve recently come to understand the wider implications of across the board wage rises.

In Australia the vast majority of our businesses are small businesses and start-ups.  Whilst a rise of $21 per week doesn’t sound like much spending money to an employee, it certainly adds up very quickly for our small employers. And it’s not just our smaller businesses who would be hit by rises in wages. This week, Myer’s Chief Executive Steve Madden has spoken out about proposed changes to penalty rates, stating that such moves could not only result in job losses, but also mean that the increased cost is passed on to the costomers’ purchases. Restaurants have also, earlier in the year, showed concerns about wage rises which will come into effect in the hospitality industry in 2010.

So, I’m happy to sit on the fence on this one, but I’m sure there are many opinions out there, so please feel free to come to ZaaBiz and share your thoughts.

Signing off,

Louise.

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