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How's Your Local Business Association Doing?
This past Saturday was Strawberry Festival Day in Clarkson, the village in Mississauga where I live. In a perfect world, all of the retailers and businesses located along the strip of Lakeshore Road that constitutes Clarkson's main business district would have been participating in the event, dishing up strawberries in some form and meeting and greeting old, and potentially new, customers. Instead, only a handful of businesses--maybe a third--embraced the opportunity.
Last summer, when Clarkson celebrated its 200th anniversary there was a much higher participation rate but still some sections of the street (which was closed off for the day's events--bands, a visit from the Mayor Hazel McCallion, horse and buggy rides and more) were noticably quiet. The following weekend during a visit to the hair salon, I asked the owner, a long-time member of the business association, why some businesses hadn't participated. She shrugged and said they just didn't want to but it wasn't for lack of trying to involve them on the part of the business association, which is well-established and active. In fact, in some cases, the business association had offered to help with decorating and planning an event for the day. These offers were turned down. In the aftermath of the 200th anniversary celebrations, a local restaurateur who didn't participate complained that his business had not increased.
Why, I wondered on Saturday (and last summer), did these businesses refuse to participate? Isn't it in a business' best interest to seize every chance to promote itself to the community? Conversely, is it damaging to a Main Street when all the businesses don't get onboard and work on events? Does anyone out there have any ideas on how to win over more of the naysayers?
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Lori Smith, , Editor-in-Chief
Lori Smith is the editor of Gifts and Tablewares, Canada's premiere gifts and tablewares magazine. Written for retailers of gifts, tablewares, housewares, stationery and home furnishing accessories, its objective is to help readers increase their sales and run their businesses more profitably by providing information on new products, merchandising, small business management, customer service, consumer behavior and industry news. The magazine is published six times a year by BIG Magazines, LP, a leading Canadian information company.
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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on June 8, 2009 3:16 PM.
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