Opinion – Congress: Pass Federal Privacy Legislation to Support Texas Small Businesses: The co-founder of Tiny House Coffee Roasters offers a solution to the patchwork system of privacy laws that is crushing small businesses – Columns

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Opinion – Congress: Pass Federal Privacy Legislation to Support Texas Small Businesses: The co-founder of Tiny House Coffee Roasters offers a solution to the patchwork system of privacy laws that is crushing small businesses – Columns

Subject: 11000000 – Politics

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COVID-19 presented enormous challenges for businesses across the country. To stay afloat amid lockdowns, many entrepreneurs shifted their operations to e-commerce as the primary mode of conducting business. This transition to digital created opportunities to reach new consumers but it also forced small companies to confront a harsh reality: The sheer number of data privacy laws makes compliance a legal nightmare – and a costly one.

Small-business owners should be able to focus on their product, customers, and growing their operations – not on navigating a tangled web of confusing regulations. In today’s digital environment, the opposite is the case. In our current system, individual states are moving to create independent laws surrounding data privacy. This forces businesses to track, monitor, and comply with a barrage of different rules depending on where their customers live. For small companies that operate online and sell nationally, maintaining compliance with this patchwork of laws may become an insurmountable hurdle to running a business.

Unfortunately, it’s also a problem I am intimately familiar with.

As the co-founder of the Austin-based Tiny House Coffee Roasters, I have always prioritized protecting my customers’ personal information – it’s a matter of integrity. I began the business after returning from Nicaragua following a stint in the Peace Corps. It was there that I frequented a local coffee cooperative in town and learned a thing or two about brewing. When I returned stateside, I decided to bring my experience back with me, and in 2014, my partner and I founded Tiny House Coffee Roasters.

Our company has always had a robust online presence, but when the pandemic hit, we were not prepared to lose the daily interactions with our customers in Austin. They were – and still are – the lifeblood of our business. But we had to adapt; and shifting to online sales meant more customer data on our servers and a greater responsibility to protect that information.

This is where data privacy laws become an issue. For companies like mine that ship products to states across the country, complying with inconsistent state privacy laws is a monumental task. Since 2018, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, and Virginia have passed legislation regulating businesses’ collection and use of customer data. In 2022 alone, an additional 25 state legislatures introduced bills to the same end.

At a time when many businesses are operating on thin margins, it’s increasingly untenable for small businesses like mine to navigate and understand the nuances of each state’s privacy law. A federal privacy law would provide consistency and a common, easy-to-understand solution for small-business owners – and now is the time for Congress to act to prevent more states from passing conflicting bills.

Unlike large corporations, businesses like Tiny House Coffee Roasters don’t have endless resources to hire attorneys and specialists to ensure compliance with these superfluous laws. Business owners simply cannot afford to absorb these administrative costs without inevitably raising prices for their customers. Considering soaring inflation, this is the last thing Texans need.

A recent study from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) estimates that without federal data privacy legislation from Congress, a state-level framework will cost our economy $1 trillion over the next 10 years. At minimum, small businesses will foot the bill for $200 billion of that projection via compliance costs, economic inefficiency, and lost growth potential.

Customers, likewise, deserve to know that their information is secure and how businesses are handling their data. In the absence of a uniform federal privacy law, consumers can’t have clear expectations, especially when dealing with companies not based in their home state. Indeed, the patchwork of privacy laws is a losing proposition for consumers and businesses alike. It’s time that changes.

Now, more than ever, Congress must act to protect our country’s small businesses from onerous, bureaucratic red tape. We need a federal privacy law that protects Americans’ personal information and is feasible for businesses to follow. A national solution will provide both clarity and consistency for companies of all sizes. But more importantly, it will allow businesses like mine to refocus our efforts on what matters most: serving our customers.

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Blake Thomas is co-founder of Tiny House Coffee Roasters, based in Austin, Texas.

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