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Joe Morrison, KEDA Executive Director for the Kitsap Sun My annual “five words about this year’s economy” column is ready... and it’s February. Sorry. At the Kitsap Economic Development Alliance we’ve been having long-term strategic plan discussions on the local economy recently. It’s taken me a bit of time to write this because I’ve been thinking about the column in light of those discussions.  Let's get to it. I believe these five words will define our economic lives in Kitsap in 2023. The positive take away: They’re all pretty much tied to economic prosperity, although there are obstacles...

 "Buy Close' is a thread weaving our business community together Aljolynn Sperber for the Kitsap Sun Do you know your neighbor’s name? Local business owners not only know their neighbors’ names, they also know their regular customers’ names, the names of their employees, their vendors, partners - on top of the names of those close to them. For local business owners, names, faces, and relationships are interwoven with everyday life. Almost anyone they cross paths with is like a neighbor. But local businesses are not woven into the community and economic development in Kitsap, they are the...

It’s time we gathered again—to talk about Kitsap, its economy, community and what our shared future might look like. Joe Morrison, KEDA Executive Director for the Kitsap Sun After years of not holding our annual fall forum because of COVID, this year the Kitsap Economic Development Alliance is back in a big way. KEDA is holding Fall Forum: Level Up October 20 from 1-5 p.m. at the Kitsap Conference Center at Bremerton Harborside.  We’ve got a lot planned: We’ll start things off with labor economist Anneliese Vance-Sherman, who will talk about the difficulties employers continue to face...

Erin Leedham for The Kitsap Sun The Kitsap Peninsula is such a beautiful place to live and work. Kitsap Economic Development Alliance’s website describes it as ”One spectacular place, endless possibilities…”   Those possibilities are where we as individuals come in. We all have opinions on how our world should be run. We vote to put officials in place who align with our goals. But there is another step which needs our energy, and that is volunteering our time.  It's everyday people making a difference that help Kitsap County's goals be realized. Governments, schools, nonprofits all...

2022 is half over. Behind us sits a robust economy. In front, one that might be more tepid.    Joe Morrison, KEDA Executive Director for the Kitsap Sun According to a recent Washington Post article, consumer spending makes up more than two-thirds of the U.S. economy. Recent analyses in the piece by both Barclays and Charles Schwab find that restaurant, travel-related and services spending is starting to weaken.  So at a recent economic development event I asked some Kitsap CEOs this related question: With a potentially slowing economy, what opportunity or challenge do you see...

David Beck,  Vice President at One Strategic Capital, Guest columnist for KEDA & the Kitsap Sun Many of you had parents or grandparents who came home to an America fundamentally changed, after World War II. The United States was emerging as the preeminent industrial power of the world. There were plenty of jobs, good opportunities for advancement and many corporations offered pensions for their workers.   Employees were thrilled to have a pension plan, and it was easy to see why. The company your grandfather worked for handled everything. They funded the plan and managed the investments until such time...

Joe Morrison, KEDA Executive Director, for the the Kitsap Sun Gratitude, they say, is a best practice for daily life. When it comes to daily life in Kitsap, I’m grateful I own my home, something becoming harder and harder to do. For much of 2022 and 2021, home values have grown aggressively across Kitsap, often between 1.5 to 2 percent monthly. To put that in perspective, if home values grow at 2 percent every month, that translates to an annual increase of 26.8 percent. That’s according to Skylar Olsen, principal economist for financial technology startup Tomo, who spoke...

Joe Morrison, KEDA Executive Director for the Kitsap Sun  As I write this, the Kitsap Economic Development Alliance (KEDA) is in the final stages of signing a $500,000 contract. We are set to receive a two-year grant to launch an innovation cluster in autonomous and unmanned water vehicles.  Let’s break it down a little — and talk a little bit about economic clusters, entrepreneurship and innovation, and why it’s important communities and economies are aspirational. Economic clusters date back to 1890, when English economist Alfred Marshall first described them as a "concentration of specialized industries in particular...

Commentary from KEDA Executive Director  Joe Morrison morrison@kitsapeda.org   Here at KEDA, we just updated our Kitsap Community Economic Profile in partnership with Western Washington University’s Center for Economic and Business Research. In this publication we traditionally favor accuracy over speed, so we’re mostly using 2020 data for our economic analyses, as it’s the most recent year for which we have robust, reliable information in house that can inform us across a variety of metrics we track annually.   Given that we’re living in rapidly changing times due to the pandemic, I’ll...

Joe Morrison (morrison@kitsapeda.org) is the Executive Director of the Kitsap Economic Development Alliance. Shoot him an email for feedback on the predictions, or join KEDA for our Kitsap Digital Hour at 11 a.m. on January 13, on the topic of Business Credibility and Credit with Jenefeness Tucker. Sign up at http://kitsapeda.me/KDH 

In October 2012, Henry Timms of New York’s 92nd Street Y had an idea. He recognized there were some new days in our holiday season, named in honor of commerce: Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday. What if, he thought, a day like this was designed to move capital, but for a different purpose—a day dedicated to charity and giving? That’s how Giving Tuesday was born. In less than a decade, the Tuesday after Thanksgiving has become a major force in driving donations. Last year Giving Tuesday was associated with an...

“There’s been a big downturn, the last month or two,” said Darren Erickson of Mainline Music, set against a backdrop of guitar picks, drumsticks and hanging ukuleles. Erickson owns the only music instrument shop in Port Orchard. He’s a little worried. “Sales have dropped 75 percent just instantly,” he said. “This just isn’t normal for us.”    So many things about our economic lives right now are contradictions. Some small businesses in our community are absolutely roaring. Many others continue to struggle. As consumers, we’ve been (generally) locked up at home for over a year and a half. As...