Future Shift

Significant changes await entrepreneurs in Florida. As a projected 2000-to-2005 growth rate of 6.9 percent brings the state's population to 16.3 million, Florida will be the fastest-growing of the five most populous states. And as well as being more densely populated, the Sunshine State will also be more diversely populated than it is now. Its residents will be less concentrated in traditional metropolitan areas and perhaps not as old as you may think.

Florida is unusual in two ways. First, it has a low rate of natural increase--approaching zero or even less in some counties. Second, it's experiencing an influx of young immigrants from other states that's stronger than many people realize. "One of the common misconceptions about Florida is that only retirees come here," says June Nogle, research demographer at the University of Florida in Gainesville. "Migration fuels a lot of the growth in Florida; it's the core reason we're growing. But retirees aren't the majority of the migrants that Florida attracts. We've been getting lots of young people and lots of families. That's slowed the climb of Florida's median age."

Most of the minority growth in Florida will, as elsewhere, be among the Latino population. But to Nogle, more interesting than ethnic diversification are the changes in the way the population will be distributed throughout the state. Increasingly, Floridians will opt to live outside Miami and other large metropolitan areas, choosing the more sparsely settled regions of the Panhandle and Central and Northern Florida.

One major question for Florida is whether baby boomers will select it as their retirement home as so many of their parents have. "We look at the numbers and see places like Colorado growing very fast and wonder whether these are going to be the new [retirement] places for baby boomers," Nogle says.

The changes expected in the Florida of the new millennium don't overly concern entrepreneur Rick Martis. The president and co-founder with vice president Frank Heinze of nutritional supplement retailer Physical Addictions in Indialantic notes that while Florida may be getting older, many of its retired residents are acting younger.

"Older people are trying to maintain healthier lifestyles to prolong their lives," says Martis, 45. "Not too many years ago, they didn't have nutritional breakdowns on labels of any food products. Now everybody reads them."

Martis plans no changes in marketing or his product mix to address the coming changes, and he believes the right business concept will see him through any amount of aging, migration or demographic shift. "[In Florida,] health and nutrition aren't going to be fads like Beanie Babies," he predicts. "They're here to stay and will grow through all ages, genders and races."

This article was originally published in the September 1999 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Future Shift.