Doing our part

Things escalated quickly indeed. We went from planning our spring break to trying to get a refund for our spring break in a matter of days. We, like so many others, are staying home and doing our part to "flatten the curve". We're doing our part, but by doing it we are also part of a very painful truth for many local independent retailers. I've spent years working with independent retailers and understand that a bad day hurts, let alone a bad month, or having to close for any amount of time. While I knew that my family and I wouldn't be leaving the house to support some of our favorite local spots, I wanted to do something. That's when I saw this tweet from my friend Mo Cheeks.

While I knew that we didn't have the resources to buy a large gift card right now, like Mo asked, I thought that there must be something I could do. Better yet, with the kids home, there had to be something that we could do as a family.

And then it came to me... I'm a marketer. I can help drive people to some of my favorite local businesses and maybe if I can get enough people to check it out we can help some of them out with multiple gift card purchases. So that's what we've done.

I explained the idea to the family, couching it as a lesson on economics, and asked the family to make a list of some of their favorite local businesses. I then put a Google doc together so that they could find and post the link for their gift cards. Within about 15 minutes (I'll have to come up with a few more ideas for these kids!) they had a short list together. I didn't take me long to put my "store" together here.

Now I'll start marketing it and see what I can do. I don't plan on spending any money to promote my "store" but I'm sure I can get some traction if I try hard enough. Each item in my store is a favorite local place, a little introduction, and a link to buy their gift card. Just so everyone knows, I'm not getting anything from this. No commission, no kickback, no affiliate fees, nothing. One, we wanted to help, two it's a fun thing to do with the kids, and three... ok, fine if more people get to my site, that's cool.

So take a look and buy a gift card if so inclined. Like it says in Mo's tweet, "we all need each other".