So this is the spring version – bigger, better, warmer (hopefully!) and just a nice time to be had by all. Get yersens down!

There’s a bit of maths that says if you spend £10 in a local shop that sells stuff from local producers the amount of money that goes back into your local economy can be over £50!*

Well if you imagine that when you buy a locally-made pie from a local shop, a big part of your money is passed on to the local piemaker. The shop employs a local accountant or even a decorator. In turn the piemaker who sources his meat from a local farm spends a big percentage of his money with the farmer. The farmer then spends some of his money at his local garage, the garage owner… etc. etc.

With each step, around 80% of each spend goes into the local economy. So in effect the money that stays locally increases locally. The more everyone spends within our area the stronger our economy grows, which means more jobs, better facilities, a vibrant town centre and a nicer place for us all to live.

But there’s a problem

The percentage of revenue that is generated by small and medium business as a total for the UK is much smaller than our European cousins. Here in the UK we are more reliant on large businesses (the chain stores and the supermarkets).

The problem with this is that large corporates quite rightly exercise economies of scale. They pick suppliers to do all of their stores throughout the UK rather than using a local provider. If the supplier is in your area, well that’s great for your area (unless the large company suddenly changes suppliers). If not, the money you spend leaks out of your town.

Large businesses pay money to shareholders (dividends) both inside and out of the UK, and profits get distributed around to the companies to different areas. An even worse leak happens when you spend with an internet based company registered as an offshore company. They pay no Tax to the UK.. so almost all of your money tends to leak out at this point.

Why is this so important?

Well it is economics in its simplest of terms. If there is more money swirling around your local economy then the better your local area will be. By better we mean that there are more prosperous businesses and shops in the area you live, leading to more employment. In turn, this means more money in people’s pockets in the area, meaning that community projects and charities are more likely to be supported. Which means there are more things to do and everyone feels better about their town…

Local independent businesses are far more likely to use other local firms than any of the big national giants would – it’s what makes them tick and they know the true value of keeping it “Totally Locally”. It’s also a lot easier!

It’s not about protectionism, it’s about small decisions that have a big impact on where we live. Ask you local butcher, baker, accountant, lawyer, mechanic, whomever how many local suppliers that they use – and you will soon see how you are affecting your local economy. Chances are that you will know someone employed by one of these companies.

Only by following the money trail do you get a true sense of the knock-on effects of buying Totally Locally. It takes you in all kinds of directions, ping-ponging from groceries and clothing, to tradesmen and accountants, each time adding to our economy. The trail is staggering.

So when you go for your next purchase, be it eggs, a sofa or new pair of shoes, consider the true effect of how you buy. Turn that tenner into fifty bob for your town.

*The New Economics Foundation – Plugging the Leaks

So here’s the idea. We’ve created some marketing material and Point of Sales to allow shops anywhere to promote produce made by local people where they live, under the Totally Locally banner. We’ve been asked a few times if it would be possible, and we thought “Why not!?”.

The only thing we ask is that shops agree to a few “House Rules” where they agree to be honest & good about the stuff they sell under the banner of TL, and they have to display the rules for everyone to see.

West Bridgford was the first place to trial it at Clumber Rd Off Licence.

Clumber Rd Off Licence took part in the West Bridgford Totally Locally launch by inviting Magpie Brewery to have a stand outside their shop. The stand was so successful, that sales of their beer in the shop rocketed over the next few months, which made Keiran (the owner) take a closer look at supplying more local produce. After she spoke with West Bridgford Town Champion Karina, they came to us with a plan.

The problem for most people who want to support their local shops is the fact that when they get home, their local shops are closed, so the only place they can go is the supermarket. Clumber Rd (being open until 10pm every night), offered to sell things on behalf of the other shops nearby. So now you can buy fish from the Fishmongers, meat from the butchers and deli stuff from the Deli, all after hours. All the time they tell people where the produce came from, so that they have an greater awareness of what’s in their town. .

It’s bringing in new customers for the Clumber Rd shop, and people are discovering things that they didn’t know were made on their doorstep. They also sell things from their own local suppliers too. It supports the town, supports the growers and makers, and lets the shop trial things they may never have thought of without taking a risk. Everybody wins!

BUT… It doesn’t need to be this complex. If you just have a shop that sells produce made by local people and you want to promote it more, we’ve got stickers and shelf Point of Sales we can send you. It’s all free, but if you fancy  chucking a few quid our way to cover print costs, we won’t argue, but it’s more about getting the Totally Locally  message across. And it’s all about trying new things to make where we live a little bit better.

If you want to ask for a promo pack, or just ask a few more questions,  drop us a message right …..here>>

It’s all looking a bit exciting really!

Well it has been extremely busy at Totally Locally this week.

After looking putting up all of the inquiries that we have had onto our blackboard we have had over 50 towns interested in finding out more about Totally Locally with most of them progressing and moving forward.

This mean that we have had to streamline processes (thank you Totally Locally Sam and Jane!) so that we can keep track and keep towns moving who want Totally Locally. What this means practically is that the more towns come on board the more there are new ideas in the mix for events, marketing, poster, you name it…it is great to see people in one town using other town ideas and vice versa. I am sure that we will update you on how Leek is looking at Sunday opening and visiting Hebden Bridge for ideas, etc.

From a practical point of view the main Totally Locally website has changed and should be much more inspirational and easy to navigate.

Today we added a £5 Effect Calculator onto the main site so that anyone can work out the effect for the population of their towns/area. For the techies it will even go into an iFrame so other people can put it on their sites if they want to.

Add to that the fact that change of use planning permission has been granted for the first Totally Locally shop to be sited at Dean Clough in Halifax and things are very seat of the pants/exciting at the moment here.

Led by the extraordinary Annette Terry, the Edwinstowe put on a huge effort, and the local people really showed their gratitude by supporting their local shops and businesses on the day.

So if you’re passing Nottingham way, drop by to this lovely little place, grab a bit to eat, have a wander and tell them where you heard about Edwinstowe!

More – below (and check out that video!)

What a day! The sun was (metaphorically, not so much literally) shining down on us all at Edwinstowe on Saturday for our Totally Locally Launch day, with a very distinct Robin Hood twist. Well, after all this is the place that the man himself tied the knot with the beautiful Maid Marian so it would have been rude not to include the legend in our festivities!

The effort made by local businesses and individuals was a bit overwhelming- certainly a place not to be messed with when it comes to passion and pride for their village – a perfect combo that is sure to see Totally Locally flourish!

There was a Robin Hood inspired trail leading locals through shops to find the clues, greeted on their merry way by Robin Hood himself, the beautiful Maid Marian, a fabulous Friar Tuck and even King Richard turned up to make it a truly Royal affair (although handing out free Totally Locally shopping bags was probably never on the royal agenda all those years ago!).

All the shops had made a big effort, with loads of great offers. It was just lovely to hear the shop owners saying that they had had people who lived in the area for a long time, making their first visit to the shops. It’s what the whole campaign is all about.

Lots and lots of people turned up on the day, with many businesses saying it had been their busiest day ever (even beating Christmas!), so a roaring success! It takes more than a bit of rain to dampen the Merrie Men (& Ladies and children) of Edwinstowe! More to come so watch this space…

And check out the video produced specially for the day by Ryan Goff & Chris Day. Amazing stuff!

Brighouse Totally Locally Market was awarded National Market Award for Best Small Speciality Market in the UK this week. This is brilliant, as this time last year it was just an idea in a couple of Brighouse businesses eye!

A great example of people working together. Brighouse Business Innitiative, all the great shops and producers, Calderdale Markets and Totally Locally.

AND Hebden Bridge market second in best small open market for the whole of the UK.  A brilliant achievement all round.

The Brighouse Totally Locally Market has been announced as the winner of the ‘Best Small Speciality Market’ award by the National Association of British Market Authorities (NABMA).

Despite a record number of entries this year, the Brighouse Totally Locally Market fought off competition from across the UK to earn its number one placing.

Over the course of the past twelve months, three Totally Locally Markets have been held in Brighouse culminating in the Christmas extravaganza at the end of November.

Each time the markets have grown in size, with more of the town dedicating space to stallholders and numbers increasing to 60 at the most recent Christmas market.  The aim of the markets has been to raise awareness of and celebrate the fabulous range of food and produce available in and around Calderdale.

John Walker, Markets Manager, Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council, who was responsible for nominating the market commented: “The Totally Locally Brighouse Market is the perfect example of how we can work with other community groups to hold events for the benefit of the whole community.  By celebrating what we have on our doorstep we are not just enjoying our own regionally produced goods and services but we are helping to increase footfall into our towns.”

Lesley Adams of Simply Flowers in Brighouse, one of the Totally Locally Market organisers comments: “The markets have received so much support and this award is a thank you to all those involved for the h

ard work and effort that has helped to make the events such a success.”

Chris Sands, from the Totally Locally campaign said: “We have been amazed by the support for Totally Locally and it is a joy to see that the Brighouse Market has been worthy of such merit.  The team that organises the markets clearly demonstrates what can be achieved when the community comes together to celebrate what they have on their own doorstep.  We are really proud of the difference that Totally Locally and its supporters have made to Brighouse and imagine that with such a team of people behind it the town will go from strength to strength.”

Well February 2012 will see the launch of Totally Locally Offers. Totally Locally Offers is an email list that people can subscribe to to get a load of great offers that the independent shops and businesses in the area are offering. If you toddle down to the shop or business then please let them know you’ve come for your Totally Locally offer…and the more offers you take up the merrier…and remember to pass on the list to your friends and colleagues. Pay it forward.

 It will launch in Calderdale as a pilot, which can then be rolled out to other Totally Locally towns that want it.

A few of the details:

• It will start as monthly to see how it goes
• We will not charge any shops or businesses for putting their offer on the list…ever.
• We will send out some blanket emails initially but people will need to register to receive the list so that we can’t be accused of spamming people.
• We will put a copy of the list on our website too.
• We will let people sponsor it if they want to.

Thant’s about it, as like the Offers list, we want to keep it simple – to the point – and after all it is about getting more people to explore their great independent shops and businesses.

When you launch Totally Locally in your town, it’s best to think about an event to help people & businesses focus on the whole idea and also to give press, radio & TV something to hang an article on. It makes sense too, in the fact that if you are handing out flyers about the whole concept of Totally Locally, an event is the perfect thing to demonstrate the whole big idea.

So…. what to do?

Totally Locally is about getting people to use their local shops, getting shops to look at their suppliers, getting people to re assess what’s on their doorstep and helping businesses to start looking at working together. This applies to all sorts of shops and businesses, be they hardware stores, bakers, accountants, etc., and you name it really.

BUT, the one thing that people will automatically associate with shopping locally and supporting local businesses is food. Why? Well we all eat (!), local is perceived to be best and with more and more programmes like River Cottage on TV, there’s a real hunger (excuse the pun) for local food. So it makes sense that any launch event should focus on food – not entirely, but it’s a way of enticing people to come and have a look at what’s going on. And when they are there you can hit them with everything – crafts, clothing, and music, whatever.

A Totally Locally Market is always a great event to hang a launch on and this has been successful in every town we’ve done one in. It’s no coincidence that some of the supermarkets are even using traditional markets in their adverts to try and make people think their produce has a quality and ‘home grown’ feel, (See Morrisons recent Christmas ad for example) so it makes sense that when it’s the real ‘Totally Locally’ deal, this is the way to go.

With all of these things, music is a great accompaniment. If you look at our West Bridgford video on our YouTube Channel, you’ll see it was completely music-tastic, with everything from jazz to barbershop to classical to blues. It was brilliant. If you involve the little ‘uns from the local school, you KNOW that Mum & Dad, and Grandma & Grandad and Great Auntie Elsie are all going to come too. The more the merrier!

Treasure trails have worked really well in some towns. They are great for getting kids involved, which means parents & grandparents too! The trails usually involve a map (again!) with all the great shops on it, all with offers for the launch day or weekend. Each shop has a clue that the kids have to collect, and guess what – on the way the shops do a free tasting! Feedback usually shows that these do well for the shops on the launch day, but even more so later, when adults get chance to call back without the children. So give them something to sample, with an offer or an incentive for them to come back, and a great big smile and something that the kids will like. Easy this marketing lark isn’t it!

We just missed a pie competition in Ampthill by a couple of months. How good would that be to run the launch alongside!!

Matlock are launching Totally Locally in their town alongside a “cinema in the park” event, one which was planned months before they even contacted Totally Locally Towers. They are running a mini fiver fest with market stalls in the park serving food & drink to go with the film screening. AND they are doing a video to screen at the launch. Brilliant stuff.

The scope is limitless, but you have to make it easy for people to want to engage with the event and to get excited about.

All of this is open to discussion, and we will support you in whatever you choose to do.

We create all the marketing material for you for free, along with press releases, etc. And the great thing is that all those who have already done these events are REALLY willing to share their experience and expertise with you and each other. Let us know what you are thinking of and we can put you in touch with the right person, or even better why not join the forum and get chatting.

For more info, or to throw your ideas into the pot, please give us a shout and contact us.

Totally Locally Chris

The Elephant in the Room

So here we are going to discuss the one thing that no one really seems to want to discuss when it comes to keeping our towns and independent shops alive… Opening Hours.

It’s a fact that times have changed. People very rarely live near to where they work. I’m very lucky, as after commuting 3 hours a day for 10 year I now have a 2 mile journey to work, which has allowed me to look a little deeper into what makes me use the shops around my work and my home. When I was commuting I didn’t use any!

The very fact that most people work at least 9 to 5, and many a lot longer, then adds a commute on top of that, means that the majority of working people have no access to their local shops, except on a weekend. And then most places choose to close on a Sunday! So we are down to a small window on Saturday when you can get to visit your local shops, actually talk to your butcher, visit your local market (if you’re lucky enough to have one) etc. But if you’ve been out on the Friday night, or you’ve got kids who invariably have a football match, ballet, karate etc…. you get the picture. Most people can’t get to their local shops when they are actually open!

It’s not that they don’t want to support the shops in their town, it’s that a lot of people can’t. We get so many emails from people saying the main reason they don’t shop locally is that their towns are always closed when they are around.

So what to do?

My theory is most of Totally Locally is based around critical mass – by that I mean if there are enough good shops worth visiting in one place, people will come. If those shops are unique more people will come. If you add to this opening when people are around…. well you get the picture.

A great example near us is Hebden Bridge. Long hailed as one of Britain’s most independent towns, Hebden dances to its’ own tune. It’s full of great little shops and cafes with most of the trade being done on Saturdays and Sundays. A lot of walkers, cyclists and day-trippers go there, particularly on a Sunday, because they know they can get something to eat or buy what they want. Some Sundays the place can be heaving with people. Compare this to some of the other towns only a few miles down the road, and you’ll find them to be almost deserted, but it had to start somewhere.

It wasn’t always like that. An interesting development in Hebden is a street called Market Street. It was the quietest part of the town where there were some empty shops and not much going on compared to the rest of the town. A few key shops moved in and opened on Sundays, now it is one of the busiest parts of the town. Critical mass. Also Sunday is a day when people are actively looking for something to do or somewhere to go. If there are interesting shops and somewhere to get a breakfast or a coffee, it suddenly becomes very attractive.

When I was recently in Spain, I saw the shops close between 2 and 5pm, then re open until 8pm, so that families could visit, and all the shops were bustling. We have a different culture in the UK which doesn’t really allow for this closing, but it’s an example of how shops have made it easy for people to use them, and some lessons can be drawn from it.

When we were in West Bridgford for the launch of Totally Locally, we were stood outside a fish & chip shop. Karina (our Champion there) said, “You should see the queue outside here on a Thursday and Friday evening”. Bearing in mind that there is a greengrocers, a fishmongers, a butchers, a deli and a cafe all within 10 meters of this fish and chip shop. It got me thinking… An opportunity to try to re-invent how people view their little shops could start with something like this. One night a week, maybe a few shops get together and open until 7.30 p.m. They advertise between themselves and after a while (it wouldn’t happen straight away) people would come to know they were open, they could buy their fish, their veg, and maybe have a coffee and all of a sudden there is an alternative to Tesco after 5pm. It’s all about working together and that critical mass again.

Don’t get me wrong, I know the long hours that many shop keepers work, and to do more would be a strain, but the rent, the rates, the electricity are all paid, so a few extra hours opening could only cost the wage of a part time member of staff for a few hours a week. After a while it should end up in more profit.

I realise it isn’t going to be easy for people, but if we are going to make a difference to business and our high street something radical has to happen. It may only be one or 2 evenings a week at the start.

A final and great example of this in action is a friend of mine. She opened a high-end shop selling jewellery, clothing and gifts in a town, which had nothing like it at all (i.e. the wrong town!). A lot of people said that it wouldn’t last. But it was unique and special, and the service was superb. So people travelled to go to it. Then my friend decided to open Sundays, in a town that was completely shut on that day. For a month they opened with hardly anyone setting foot through the door. Then gradually people got to know, and more people came, and after a while it became one of their busiest days. But here’s the great thing. The cafe across the road decided to open on a Sunday too. At first no one came, then gradually they got to know that the cafe was open and now it’s one of his busiest days! And that’s how it starts. Two places worth visiting, close together.

A few of the shops on one street in Leek are trying this at the moment, so we’ll keep updating how they are getting on.

So it’s all about re-thinking things, how our High Street can survive in a time when most people are working long hours and away from the place they live. It’s taking a leaf out of the Supermarket’s book (people shop in supermarkets primarily for convenience not many people actually enjoy the trip!) It takes brave steps, but if no one tries Britain will look a very different place in a few years time.

I hope this doesn’t come across as preachy; it’s just that so many people have told us “Get shops to open later and I’ll use them!” And if enough people say it, it must have some bearing on things.

If you want to talk to us about this drop us a line on our contact page, and if you want to try and get a few shops together to try something like this we can help you with some ideas for marketing the concept. And as always, if you disagree with what we’ve said here, please say so. It’s all about throwing ideas around.

Totally Locally Chris

This feel we are working heavily on the strategy for the next 12 months in terms of giving Towns even more options in terms of engaging with the public, finding their fantastic independent shops and business and promoting all the great things that re going on.

We are currently in the process of drafting our response to the Portas Review, which is interesting because we have been doing a lot of the things that she has recommended in the last 2 and half years. The nice thing is that most of it has been done from the ground up i.e. by people, shopkeepers and business owners rather than being parachuted in…and our experience tells us this is what makes the town more successful when the buy in is both from the public and the businesses.

As soon as we have done we will post our response up on the site as well.

The totally Locally Shops project is moving forward with the pace of a snowball rolling down a hill, getting ever bigger and just as exciting. You can expect to see more on the Shops blog, and on the site as well.

Other ideas we in the process of working on are Totally Locally Offers, a forum (our Natter site) to discuss opinions and a fair bit of other stuff.

Just a quick update for now. TL Nigel