A local chamber of commerce has been forced to cancel its annual business exposition for small companies because of the sluggish local economy.

The Inland Empire Black Chamber of Commerce in Rancho Cucamonga was scheduled to hold its 2008 Minority Business Expo May 16 at the Victoria Gardens Cultural Center, said Lennell Jones, the chamber's president.

That gathering would have been the chamber's fifth consecutive yearly assembly of small, minority-owned businesses based in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, Jones said.

But when the chamber was able to sign up only 37 businesses, even after reducing its rate to $500 per business, its board of directors voted 12-1 to cancel the event.

Several corporate sponsors dropped out, citing the slow economy, Jones said.

"It is with great regret that we are announcing the postponement of our 2008 Minority Business Expo," Jones said in a letter dated May 12 that was sent by e-mail to the chamber's estimated 600 members.

"We wanted this expo to be the biggest minority expo in the Inland Empire, however with the economy slumping, we realized that this has caused a tremendous strain on some of our small businesses."

Jones wrote that planning for next year's expo is already under way. The chamber's 11th annual celebrity golf tournament, scheduled to be held June 20-22 in Palm Springs, and its annual Political Process Convention in October are both expected to be held as scheduled.

About 1,700 people from approximately 100 Inland businesses participated in last year's exposition, when the chamber charged between $1,200 and $1,500 for an exposition booth.

The business expo costs about $15,000 to stage, meaning about 100 businesses had to sign up at the reduced rate in order for the chamber to break even. But the board of directors probably would have held the event, and absorbed the loss, if 50 businesses had agreed to participate this year, Jones said.

"Fifty was as low as we could go and still put on a good exposition, but unfortunately we weren't able to get that," said Jones, chamber president for three years and owner of Lennell Jones Construction, a residential and commercial building contracting firm in Fontana. "This wasn't something we wanted to do, but everyone knows the economy is a little slow right now. We're all in the same boat. Everyone is having to cut back."

A slow economy typically hits small businesses first, said Cindy Roth, president and chief executive officer of the Greater Riverside Chambers of Commerce.

"I think everyone is starting to feel it now," Roth said. "Large and small businesses are having to cut back. I think the main thing with a business expo is making sure that it fits people's needs."

The Riverside chambers' two main events so far this year, the mayor's state of the city address in January and the its annual officer installation ceremony in March, were both held on scheduled at the Riverside Convention Center.

Both events met or exceeded their attendance goals, Roth said.

"I think this might be more about the state of the overall economy than it is about small business," said Mike Stull, director of California State University, San Bernardino's Inland Empire Center for Entrepreneurship. "It's disappointing that they lowered their registration fees and they still couldn't make it happen. But people at all levels are having to cut back."

Stull, who spent five and a half years as executive director of the Inland Empire's Small Business Development Center, agreed that small businesses do take a bigger hit in a slow economy.

"They have a much harder time of it because they have less margin for error," Stull said.