By Liam Verster

Shop Local

Federal funds help promote, support Grande Prairie area businesses

Jul 27, 2021 | 12:52 PM

The Grande Prairie and District Chamber of Commerce has been awarded a $207,000 grant under the federal Shop Local funds to promote and support local small and medium sized businesses.

The grant isn’t intended to be distributed to local businesses, but be used for programs to support and promote them.

The Chamber has a few ideas on how to do that, one involves getting businesses involved in the new provincial e-commerce platform Chamber Market; another is through a partnership with the Grande Prairie Tourism Association to support the industry, and the third is an awareness and video campaign to encourage people to shop local.

Larry Gibson, Chair of the GPDCC’s board, says one of the biggest initiatives they want to get going is getting businesses involved in the Alberta Chamber of Commerce’s Chamber Market program.

“It’s basically an e-commerce platform for small and medium sized businesses that don’t have that in their portfolio right now,” says Gibson.

Meaningful Mementos

Remembering Someone You've Lost at Christmas

Dec 03, 2024

Seasonal Sorrow

How Do You Get Through The Holidays When You're Grieving?

Nov 01, 2024

Upcoming Events at Oliver's

Grief & Loss and Estate Planning Seminars

Oct 02, 2024

“So what we can do with this funding is help those businesses that want to get onto that platform on-board and give them the skills and training they need to access the platform and help them out to promote their products on the e-commerce platform solution.”

He adds this could be a very beneficial program for a lot of businesses as they try to build their brand and expand their reach.

“When the pandemic hit the Canadian Chamber of Commerce did a survey across Canada and [found that] over 50 per cent of businesses didn’t have a website. So it has really been identified as something that is a need, and for those businesses who don’t have that access or those platforms in place, this will give the avenue and the opportunity to do that.”

Businesses that do want to get involved with the Chamber Market will have to pay a small registration fee, and a small percentage of sales will also be tacked off when using the platform. Gibson encourages any business owner who wants to be involved to contact the GPDCC.

Another big idea by the GPDCC is bringing the GetInTheLoop program to the region.

“We want to promote and open up some opportunities for businesses that want to look at their marketing on the GetInTheLoop app.”

Gibson adds the details of that program are still being worked out. In the meantime he and the Chamber want to work with the Tourism Association to come up with ideas on how to promote and support the local tourism industry.

“As we all know [tourism-businesses] we’re hit fairly hard when the pandemic hit, and if we can put some things forward that promote them and support them so they grow the economy and grow out of the recovery.”

The GPDCC also plans to run an awareness and video campaign to encourage the public to choose local over alternatives.

“We’ll be working with a company to put that together and hopefully have that out here in a short while.”

That campaign will be run through the GPDCC’s website and social media, as well as through its media partners.

Gibson adds they also want to form a committee to come up with other ideas to promote local businesses using any funds left over after the first three initiatives are launched.

The $207,000 grant comes from the second round of funding through the Shop Local program. Gibson says they had applied for the first and didn’t get it, but is actually more pleased to have it now as opposed to earlier.

“I think now is actually probably better given that the [COVID] restrictions were lifted on July 1st, so now that everyone’s back out and getting their businesses up and running and everything’s gradually getting back to normal, I think we have a better opportunity now to get the programs out there as people pick up their activities.”

Gibson says they haven’t received the funds as of yet, but plans to get these programs going as soon as the money is available.

The Grande Prairie and District Chamber of Commerce is also applying for the third and final round of the Shop Local funding, but Gibson says if they are successful in that bid, it likely won’t be as much money as they were awarded in this round.