WESTBROOK – Nowadays, bustling local stores, filled with holiday shoppers, are mostly a memory.
But there are some efforts to bring the shoppers back to Westbrook this season.
Mary Brooking, an artist member of the Saccarappa Art Collective, is the driving force behind the green “Holiday on Main Street” flyers that are now available in several local businesses.
The flyers contain advertisements and discount coupons for local businesses like the Saccarappa Art Collective, My Lady’s Tea Room and Boutique, Tropical Sun Tanning, the Frog and Turtle, Catbird Creamery, the Dancing Elephant restaurant, Sportsman’s Hardware, Full Court Press and Soma Massage and Wellness.
Brooking said she got the idea for the flyer from a similar movement in Portland. “Portland has the ‘Buy Local’ movement (and it’s) very strong,” she said. “They have decals on windows and things like that, and I’ve always thought it would be so nice to get something like that started in Westbrook. So, I just thought, ‘I’m going to go ahead and do a flyer, just myself and see how it goes’.”
Brooking said local businesses paid a “really small” amount to advertise in the flyer, just enough to cover her costs, adding that Full Court Press supplied the printing services in exchange for an ad.
“I just wanted to keep it easy to afford so anybody could afford to advertise in it,” she said. “The shops were very excited about it.”
“The kernel of the idea is if we have all these flyers in our shops and we bring them to the attention of our customers, basically what we’re doing is advertising each other,” Brooking said.
Brooking’s effort isn’t the only one by local businesses to band together this holiday season. On Friday, Dec. 14, a group of businesses housed at 625 Bridgton Road will be holding a “Shop for a Cause” open house from 4-6 p.m.
According to Trisha Grinnell of R & R Skin Care Studio, one of the businesses involved in the effort, the open house will feature four “fairly new businesses,” including R& R Skin Care, UniQue Hair Design, the White Lily Florist and This Old Thing Consignment Boutique. In addition to raffles, door prizes, free hair and skin consultations and floral design demonstrations, there will be a canned food drive for the Good Shepard Food-Bank, and anyone bringing in a donation will get 20 percent off goods and services.
There will also be local entertainment at the open house, as Westbrook singer/songwriter Kate Schrock will be performing.
Grinnell said the open house is an effort to get people to think locally when it comes to shopping.
“We want people to shop locally, that’s for sure,” she said. “I know I feel good when I shop locally. It’s helping out the economy.”
Bill Baker, Westbrook’s assistant city administrator for business and community relations, said while he was unfamiliar with the grassroots effort behind the “Holiday on Main Street” flyer, the city is “constantly trying to do things that would impact getting people to shop locally,” he said. “I think it’s critically important.”
Baker said the city is “trying to find ways to help local businesses band together.”
And something like that is in the process of happening. A group of Westbrook businesspeople, led by Lee Hews, the owner of Current Publishing, the parent company of the American Journal, is looking to start a “Buy Local” chapter in the city.
“A group of small business owners have been meeting and discussing a Buy Local chapter for Westbrook,” said Hews. “We hope that we will have enough interest to move forward with this in 2013. We have been working with the leaders of the South Portland and Scarborough Buy Local groups to learn about the process and will put our core group together early next year. The idea will be to promote shopping locally, and for local businesses to support each other.”
Baker said he thinks that Westbrook can return to the days when people looked to the downtown first for their shopping needs.
“I’m personally convinced that Westbrook is staged for a major comeback,” he said. “There’s a lot of great energy here now.”
Send questions/comments to the editors.
