How do you discover the most interesting indie businesses in your area? Word of mouth? An app? What about a printed guide?
I speak to Scout Guide about their role supporting local, indie businesses in larger cities. Scout Guide is headquartered just over the mountain from Staunton and uses a combination of new technology and print to make discovery and business promotion just a tad easier. And, frankly, just a tad sexier, too.
I also pose a question to you: how do you promote your business (or discover others) in your very smallest city? Fellow micropolitan business owners would like to know.
A thanks to my NYC-to-C’ville friend Sarah W-M. for making the introduction. Enjoy!
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Scout Guides showcase indie businesses
Katie McCaskey (@UrbanEscapee) What is Scout Guide?
Susie Matheson (@TheScoutGuide) The Scout Guide is a city guide the highlights the local passion, flavor, culture of independent business people in a community. I should say “beautifully highlights” because production quality is very important to the guide book and web and blogging components. We have editors in nearly 40 cities/communities producing the guide books, blogging and building relationships between independent business people of each local community and the people/patrons that support them.
They are beautifully produced print guides. Why is Scout Guide passionate about local, independent businesses?
Scout’s goal is to bring an awareness of all the cool places a (small or large) town has to offer. It’s true of most places that local business owners or architects/artists/bankers whoever they are, are often the real backbone to a community. Sometimes it’s great real estate or a small record store, but all of them are gems and they need to be featured in a different way. This is, in one word advocacy because
the local entrepreneur is the soul of the community and if we don’t support them we lose the unique qualities of place.
(click to tweet!)
It’s ironic, but even the large corporations resist that notion and you see a lot of national brands trying to masquerade themselves as smaller independent brands. That’s more than a trend.
Do you think a return to “local” is also about making and growing connections with people around you, much like a small(er) town? What do you think the adoption of the guides says about our evolving economy?
Charlottesville is a special place and we will always be thankful to those first entrepreneurs, store owners, local artisans and business people for getting behind our first Scout Guide books, and prior to that, for encouraging the blog. Clearly our growth around the country has proved Charlottesville’s not the only city that wants to find a better way to promote “local”. Our growth gives us a robust network of local business people that each community can align themselves with.
each city has a guide – does your micropolitan?
This is tremendous for the advertisers and local business people featured because in most cases they are the best their community has to offer and now they are in the company of “the best” from another community. Using our Editors/Guides/Regional Blogs we can cut through the inefficiencies of internet search to present what’s current and what’s local.
Small business and entrepreneurship is the direction of our evolving economy. There is freedom, ingenuity, autonomy, success and sometimes failure, but people are “going for it” and that’s always been the strength of our economy and the paying public is aware that
if we don’t support the local risk takers they’ll be swallowed by the corporate giants — what’s cool about that?
We see “big box” retail people come through the independent boutique stores all the time and steal unique styles and ideas, they mass produce the trend and cut the price. It’s hard to compete with that. No, the local people need a voice, Scout gives them that.
Do you think geography matters more or less for local businesses today versus 10 years ago?
Of course geography has an impact but technological developments have made big changes. One of our advertisers in a small antique store can access iPhone photos of piece of furniture and learn everything about it even if it’s 300 miles away and bid on it before the auction happens. These kind of tools allow the store owner to have items that they would never have had before because they could not realistically [physically] make it to all the auctions.
Yes, I see many brick-and-mortar indie businesses using technology to their advantage. For instance, by expanding with an online store. What trends do you see in the local businesses featured in Scout Guides for the next 10 years?
Local is better and the faces behind the business are the real stars of the town. The Scout Guide and site are free to the consumer. It’s a gift, in good faith, from local business to the town and people in it. The trend will be to support that.
What overall trends do you predict for Main Street or neighborhood-based businesses featured in Scout Guide?
Profits up!
a franchise model applied to local
Amen! I guess what I was asking was, could you identify one industry or artisan speciality that appears to be growing based on what is appearing in the guides?
I would guess that the businesses fall into roughly three categories: public-facing, “placemaking” businesses (offering product, services and experiences); artistic and/or artisan businesses (offering product or service that places emphasis on handmade, historic, or craft), and lastly, somewhat experimental business and model, combining new technology with traditional economic exchange, e.g. time share, worker-owned, businesses.
What they share in common is revitalization of the city economic and social fabric, even if their “city” is incredibly small.
How can someone start a Scout Guide in their area?
Simply email us and start the conversation. We are actively seeking editors in the states and international. A Scout Guide editor is an incredible job; fun, demanding, and requires a range of skills so there is never a dull day. Most importantly the start up costs are low and you can build a profitable business with minimal risk.
