Shop and drop some savings at Shop Teal Thursday
BY KADIE TAYLOR
THE LAFAYETTE SUN
LAFAYETTE — Get out and shop small. Shop Teal Thursday is coming to Chambers County on Dec. 2 to encourage community commerce through deals and discounts at local businesses.
“There’s Black Friday, and everyone’s going to shop the Black Friday deals,” said Executive Director of the Greater Valley Area Chamber of Commerce Carrie Wood. “But we want to make an effort and give our small businesses the opportunity to have that same shine — Shop Teal Thursday is what we came up with, and it’s our spin on Black Friday. We reach out to the local retailers in our area and ask them if they want to participate, and when they do want to participate, we just ask them to do discount items, sales, giveaways, things like that, the exact same thing that you get at a big box stores [during Black Friday].”
Wood said — through Shop Teal Thursday — participating businesses can attract shoppers to take advantage of their discounts without worrying about advertising.
“Each retail store that participates, we provide them with a red and teal bow, and we go out and we put those on their doors so that everyone knows that that store is participating on that Thursday,” she said. “The stores can choose their hours; they can choose to stay open later if they want to, and then we advertise the day as a whole. So we pay for radio ads and post on social media, any kind of way that we can advertise, we do it as a whole. It’s up to the individual store owners to advertise what they are doing as an individual.”
Wood said last year, 17 stores participated in Shop Teal Thursday, and the Greater Valley Area Chamber of Commerce provided buckets and tickets for those who purchased from participating small businesses to enter in a gift card drawing — shoppers will be entered in a drawing with a purchase at each participating store at this year’s Shop Teal Thursday as well.
“The tickets are kind of twofold for us,” she said. “One, we’re able to count those tickets and know how many people shop locally. Last year, 581 tickets were completed. So we’re going to say right at 600 people shop local on that one day, which was a huge success for our area. Then we do a giveaway to a grocery store. We do two drawings, a gift certificate to Givorns and one to Renfroe’s.”
Through Shop Teal Thursday, Wood said the initiative provides a discount day for locals for Christmas shopping and brings community commerce to small businesses.
“Not only are they shopping locally, getting their Christmas gifts or even maybe it’s something for themselves, but they also had the opportunity to maybe provide that Christmas meal for their family for free from the Chamber [through the drawing for the gift certificate],” she said. “So as they’re shopping local, they’re also being entered to win the gift card to a grocery store. So that way we’re supporting our grocery stores and we’re supporting our local retailers.
“Some of these stores had 50 to 100 tickets, that’s huge, even if it was $1 item, well, that’s an extra 100 or $200 that they made,” she said. “Of course, nothing is $1, so hopefully that pushed extra revenue into their stores during the holiday season, which is sometimes kind of slow for our small businesses. So this, hopefully, will help bring back the energy and push them through the winter and spring.”
Wood said she hopes Chambers County residents will get out and Shop Teal Thursday. For more information, visit greatervalleyarea.com.
“Our communities are a circle; we have to support our community and support our businesses because our businesses are not successful if our community is not successful, and our community is not successful if our businesses are not successful,” she said. “So, hence the reason why the chamber tries to do a little of both. We try to put on community events that help grow our community and make our community thrive. We also try to do events to help our small businesses, to make our small businesses thrive. We know we can’t have small businesses without a healthy community, and we can’t have a healthy community without a healthy business community.”
