This page provides a range of resources designed to help small business owners grow and develop their businesses.
Whether you're just starting out or looking to expand, you'll find valuable tools and information to support your journey.
Explore opportunities for training and networking to take your business to the next level.
Startup Shakeup
Startup Shakeup is a community for you, the movers, shakers, and change-makers in North East Victoria. It’s your ticket to networking and educational events that will support your mission to solve local problems and support causes that shape our future. Learn more online.
Brandlocal Free Webinars
Brandlocal is an initiative designed to assist businesses keep up to date with skills and knowledge. Delivered online through FREE modules, the workshop portal aims to provide you with skills to navigate the current climate.
Initially developed to assist Alpine with crisis management, the platform has been further developed delivering free online content in response to feedback provided.
Small Business Bus | Online and Face to Face Mentoring
Operated by Small Business Victoria, the Small Business Bus visits Melbourne and regional Victoria as a 'travelling office on wheels'. It offers friendly, professional assistance and expert advice from an experienced business mentor.
Business Victoria offers free online business advice sessions to help you start or grow your small business. Available Monday to Friday, the one-on-one sessions with a business expert will provide information on your business idea or how to grow your existing business.
Small Business Victoria Workshops | Online
All Small Business Victoria workshops are specifically designed for Victorian-based businesses. Explore topics on starting your business, building resilience, marketing, finance, taking your business online and business planning.
The Small Business Bus travels throughout Victoria and offers mentoring sessions in-person. Keep an eye out on the Small Business Victoria portal for dates, locations and times.
Visit Small Business Victoria to find a workshop at a time that suits you.
Building your Alpine knowledge
Council has a suite of information available to assist community and business to make informed decisions.
The material available can assist with information needed when applying for grants, develop targeted business material reflective of our local economy and community profiles.
The Hume Regional Growth Plan is one of eight regional growth plans across Victoria.
It provides a broad direction for regional land use and development as well as high level planning frameworks and the means to implement the strategic land use and infrastructure directions that are set out in the Regional Strategic Plans.
This plan will assist you to frame our local economy and community and your business in relation to the development of the region.
To learn more about the Hume Region visit the Regional Development Victoria’s website. Here you will also find contact details for the local office located in Wangaratta.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) website makes township data available for populations of 50 people or more. The 2021 Census results, a comprehensive snapshot of our country, will be released in stages from June 2022 to mid-2023.
This will assist you in profiling our region detailing the local narrative and when paired with historic data tells the story of how we are changing.
Another useful tool developed by the ABS to advocate for our community is the Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA) which provides a map of Index of Relative Socio-economic Disadvantage (IRSD) interactive map.
The ABS offers QuickStats link for the Alpine Shire local government area for 2016 can be used to search for the Alpine Shire as a whole or buy township. For in-depth information about our community visit our general community profile.
The Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) provides data tables projecting populations from 2011 to 2051. This information assist in forecasting for future demand.
DELWP also provides information on townships over time with time series data from 1981 to 2016 (using the enumerated population).
Alpine Shire Council has local data provisions produced by REMPLAN. Our economic profile provides you with a summary of our economy, jobs and business insights. The option to delve deeper economy is made available through focus areas of industry, tourism, workers and trends.
Our community profile tells you who we are with the visual assistance of an Alpine Shire map identifying townships. Develop a greater understanding of our community and search through our population, migration, families, education, work, housing, wellbeing and trends information.
If you have any queries regarding how to use this information contact the Economic Development team at Council to assist you with its interpretation.
Tourism North East (TNE) is our regional tourism body representing the region we are located in known as the High Country.
Through the TNE portal you can explore all the attributes that make the High Country truly unique and understand the position of Alpine Shire in our region.
As part of their visitation information they provide fact sheets summarising the latest tourism data for Victoria's High Country.
Over the years TNE have developed a catalogue of information allowing you to compare previous years and benchmark the region's development.
Further assisting you to understand the role tourism plays in the Alpine Shire and the High Country, the Economic Development team have produced a local tourism fact sheet.
Starting in 2016 our fact sheets now extend to 2022 aiding to tell our Alpine story.