Other than some of the galleries, most merchants in our area stopped doing the wine & cheese thing long ago. People just come in, grab a cup of wine & a fist full of cheese and leave. Galleries are more suited to long conversations between visitors over a work of art, whereas antiques and collectables require more direct interaction between a potential customer and the owner over an object.
What we have thought about, though, is holding lectures on weekend evenings after dinner time. Something like a 1/2 hour presentation about folk art or early American wrought iron, collecting early glass, things like that. We’d do wine & cheese for that kind of thing. But we’re hesitant to put much time or money into a thing like this unless/until the city is willing to promote these things OUTSIDE the city.
I recently saw a copy of Lancaster City Living magazine, and was somewhat impressed with the nice articles about downtown businesses. I saw that it’s a “non profit” with a well represented board of city government and local organizations, and thought I would contact them. Turns out that as I was reading this thing, a rep from the magazine was at our shop trying very hard to sell VERY expensive ad space to my wife. She said he had no real interest in the shop and didn’t ask much about it, but left a “sales kit” for me to look at.
I emailed the rep and basically said we’re just getting started and don’t have an ad budget, but as we’re the newest antiques shop in the city maybe they’d write an article letting people know about us.
“We’ll get back to you” was the reply. I found that discouraging, frankly, as the message seemed to be “Want a story? Buy an ad”.
It also still seems you can’t get your business promoted or recognized in this town unless you have some kind of insider status.
When we opened we contacted Lancaster Arts, DID, JSID, the Chamber and other “business and growth” groups. Two listed us in their web directories, and of course we went onto mass-email lists, but that’s been about it. Lancaster Arts’ director stopped in once and complimented us on the shop, but didn’t really offer much help although she was very nice. And that’s been the sum of it.
Nobody else has stopped in, sent an invitation to join, offered promotional assistance, nothing. Have yet to see Rick Gray come in, which is ironic since he lives two blocks away and Steve Reed from Harrisburg has been in twice and nearly refurnished his office from our stock.
So, overall my take on downtown promotion is that most of the city’s efforts have been on hoping the convention center would do their work for them, while doing lot’s of “fluffy” feel-good things to give the appearance that they’re full-steam on making downtown prosper.
