Lowest startup cost cities
1. Chattanooga 2. Wichita, Kan. 3. Greensboro, N.C. 4. Columbia, S.C. 5. Knoxville 6. Little Rock, Ark. 7. Memphis 8. Lexington, Ky. 9. Orlando, Fla. 10. Winston-Salem, N.C. Source: SmartAssets study of 80 U.S. cities for costs of starting a business
Chattanooga is the lowest cost city in America to start a new business, according to a new study by the online personal finance service SmartAssets.
For the second consecutive year, Chattanooga was ranked as the cheapest among the 80 largest U.S. cities studied by SmartAssets for the first-year costs of starting a business with five employees operating in a 1,000-square-foot commercial office.
Chattanooga had the lowest labor costs of any city and offered below average costs for office space, legal costs, filing fees and utilities compared with most other cities in the study.
Kathryn Menchetti, director of small business and entrepreneurship for the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce, said the 127,000-square-foot INCubator on the North Shore is the largest business incubator in Tennessee, housing about 70 businesses in low-cost, subsidized office space and providing free or low-cost training, legal assistance and expert counseling for hundreds of businesses. Over the past three decades, more than 540 businesses have “graduated” from the incubator and moved into their own facilities after being helped and nurtured in a lower-cost setting during their early stages.