Berkshire Chamber, Visitors Bureau Launch 'Buy Local' Drive
Berkshire County residents will be getting a strong message over the coming weeks: Buy in the Berkshires.The timely campaign is part of a broader strategy to showcase all the services and businesses in Berkshire County being spearheaded by the Berkshire Visitors Bureau and Berkshire Chamber of Commerce.
The plan has been percolating for awhile but the sinking economy and the holiday season prompted the proactive strike to get people thinking about where they're spending their dollars.
"It's a tough economy and people don't have a lot of disposable income," said chamber President Michael Supranowicz on Tuesday. "It's important that we try to keep as much disposable income in our local economy as well so we can to preserve the jobs we have."
It may be the holidays, but Visitors Bureau Vice President Ray Smith said the campaign's focus wasn't just on shopping and merchants, but rather the broad spectrum of services the Berkshires has to offer.
Whether someone is buying a car or office supplies or trying to find an accountant or lawyer or going to a mall, the idea is to keep them looking within — not without — the Berkshires.
"There's so many great businesses here," said Smith. "It's a just a reminder message in these tough economic times for residents to look at all the businesses in the region."
Local media partners are providing advertising space to drive residents to the two organizations' member directories. Boxcar Media, iBerkshire's parent company, built the Web page. Other chambers will also be approached about joining the campaign, said Supranowicz.
The Web page offers up six reasons for buying local, including investing in the community, creating jobs and helping the environment, along with links to both the chamber and bureau directories.
"There's such a trickle-down effect," said Smith. "It's helping to secure jobs, helping to sustain the future for the Berkshires."
Collaboration between Berkshire business, nonprofits, educators and communities has been going on for a long time, and was the theme of sorts of the recent annual meeting of the Visitors Bureau.
Keeping the Berkshire economy chugging along in bad times as well as good is the impetus for "Buy in the Berkshires," said Supranowicz, as the groups build the bigger campaign for next year.
"It's a spiral effect: people get laid off and have less money to spend, which means more people get laid off and have less to spend," he said. "We have to what we can to keep jobs here."
