Are you going Totally Locally?
For many years I’ve been following the great work of a small team doing big things. I’ve watched them grow their initiative at the same rate that we’ve developed The Teenage Market, starting at a grassroots level and building upwards with momentum to create a national movement. Today, they are working with over 50 towns to help promote their local shops, local high streets and local markets.
The team I’m talking about, of course, is Totally Locally, who started out back in 2009 as an idea by Chris Sands. Chris wanted to use his skills to create an effective shop local campaign which could help small independents express their uniqueness and show why people should support them. They didn’t push a negative message or tell people ‘use us or lose us’, they focused on highlighting the true value of independents by demonstrating how spending just a small amount with them could make a huge impact in the local economy.
This idea really comes to life in a video that Chris played at the recent NAMBA Conference showing the journey of a magic tenner. It starts with a visiting tourist who goes and spends £10 in a local shop and ends up travelling to a coffee shop owner, the local butcher, a local worker and the local landlady, before ending up back in the shop it started off in. The key message is, if everyone spent just £10 per week in local shops or markets, instead of online or in supermarkets, it could bring in an extra £40 million per year into the local economy.
This is the fundamental message of Totally Locally, by spending just a small amount in the place where you live, you’re helping to secure it’s future for years to come. It seems that now even the big four supermarkets and multi-nationals are realising this and are trying to tap into this sense of shopping ‘local’ in their stores. You can’t, however, beat the real thing and I really praise Totally Locally, along with Love Your Local Market, for creating shop local campaigns which have now evolved into international movements driven by the efforts and energies of local people.
I’d highly recommend that anyone interested in running an effective shop local campaign in their local community, be it for their local market or high street, get in touch with Chris and Marc, who runs Totally Locally Leek, to benefit from their innovative toolkit for towns.
Joe Barratt
Co-Founder, The Teenage Market
If you would like to contact Joe about setting up a Teenage Market in your town or city please email him at joe@theteenagemarket.co.uk