Chamber shopping campaign surges
Wiscasset Town Planner Misty Parker listens to another speaker December 28 before she starts a prize drawing in connection with the Wiscasset Area Chamber of Commerce’s “Think Outside the Box” campaign. The drawing and campaign celebration took place at Le Garage Lounge on Water Street. The bowl in the foreground is brimming with 371 completed entries representing $37,100 in shopping dollars spent locally. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper
“Big Al’s” in Wiscasset donated these and other fireworks for the Wiscasset Area Chamber of Commerce’s celebration of its buy local campaign. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper
Fireworks cap the chamber’s December 28, “Think Outside the Box” wrap-up celebration at Le Garage Lounge on Water Street in Wiscasset. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper
Wiscasset Town Planner Misty Parker listens to another speaker December 28 before she starts a prize drawing in connection with the Wiscasset Area Chamber of Commerce’s “Think Outside the Box” campaign. The drawing and campaign celebration took place at Le Garage Lounge on Water Street. The bowl in the foreground is brimming with 371 completed entries representing $37,100 in shopping dollars spent locally. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper
“Big Al’s” in Wiscasset donated these and other fireworks for the Wiscasset Area Chamber of Commerce’s celebration of its buy local campaign. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper
Fireworks cap the chamber’s December 28, “Think Outside the Box” wrap-up celebration at Le Garage Lounge on Water Street in Wiscasset. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper
Year two of a buy local, holiday shopping campaign brought in at least $37,100 to Wiscasset area businesses, up 40 percent from 2012, Wiscasset Town Planner Misty Parker said.
The Wiscasset Area Chamber of Commerce's move to start the campaign weeks earlier this year, with the local early bird sales November 9, likely played a large role in the increase, Parker said.
The full yield for merchants might be even higher, because the $37,100 is based only on the 371 completed “passports” shoppers turned in, each representing $100 in purchases, Parker said; it doesn't account for any not turned in, or partly filled ones with fewer than the five stamps needed to enter the campaign's prize drawing. Each $20 buy garnered a stamp.
The chamber wrapped up its “Think Outside the Box” campaign at Le Garage Lounge on December 28, with Brie, shrimp and fireworks. The celebration had been put been put off a week as the recent ice storm loomed.
Big Al's on Route 1 in Wiscasset donated the fireworks to the chamber. The Wiscasset Fire Department was on hand as a volunteer lit up the night sky.
“Having a chamber is a nice thing,” “Big Al” Cohen said about why he made the donation. “I'd like to see the chamber succeed, and this is me doing my part.”
Chamber board member Monique McRae said planning will now get under way for “Box” 2014. Organizers will look at what worked and what didn't this year, in order to make year three an even bigger success, she said.
The campaign not only adds to shoppers' incentive to keep their gift-buying dollars local, it can get them to set foot for the first time in businesses they may patronize in the future, said McRae, branch manager at The First on Gardiner Road.
“It gets them into the environment, and they can see what we do,” she said.
Saturday night's drawing for several prizes included two grand prize getaways: Linda Winterburg won a night at Samoset Resort; Susan Bates won two nights' lodging on Moosehead Lake.
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