The Town Kit has a poster called The Magic Tenner. This is really popular with shoppers, as it states “When you Shop Here, You Support Another XXX Businesses Who Supply & Work With Us.” It shows exactly how shopping locally can make a big difference on a local economy, even when you spend a small amount.
The Magic Tenner campaign is all about how money flows around the local economy and highlighting just how much impact local businesses and shop have in the community.
If you have read the Magic Tenner campaign message you will know that this part of the campaign is not quite as journalistically friendly as spending a fiver and making the place you live better.
However, this part of the campaign is really important as it starts to link up supply chains between businesses that people hadn’t really thought of. The key to this is the poster that can go in the window or noticeboard of any hairdressers, accountants, shop or restaurant. This part of the campaign is when making your town that little bit better focuses on more than just shops.
You will need to remind people of all of the local suppliers that they take for granted e.g. The Window Cleaner, the sandwich shop where they get their lunch, the local magazine they use to place adverts as well as the usual people that they find on their purchase ledger. It soon adds up and will probably reach the thousands if you collected up all the businesses together.
This spiders web of supply chains is what makes the biggest difference to the local economy.
But many local business and shop owners don’t know the businesses that are five doors down from them!
We once had a conversation with a bakery looking for a printer only for them to be told that there is a printer a bit further down the road from them that bought his sandwich every day with them!
As part of the Magic Tenner campaign it is always worth putting on a Totally Locally Gathering where you can invite businesses, producers, shopkeepers and all interested parties just to talk a bit about Totally Locally, the Magic Tenner and then leave them to it. Soon you will see deals and links being made.
One of the nicest link-ups we heard from a TL Gathering was a supplier offering to deliver for another supplier to help reduce distribution costs all around. If you multiply this “being nice” around a hundred business the effect on a town is startling.
So it is a case of distributing the “When you shop here, when you eat here” posters in the businesses in your town and drive the message home to them as well as the press. It is amazing how many people change their attitude towards a business that shows its support for local businesses.
Some businesses have even changed their promotional campaigns to reflect this and differentiate themselves.
And this is the idea behind it all:
There’s a bit of maths* that says if you spend £10 in a shop that sells stuff from local producers the amount of money that goes back into the local economy can be over £50!
Imagine picking up a pork pie for your lunch.
If you buy a local-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 then…
Well, you get the idea.
With each step, around 80% of each spend goes into the local economy. So in effect, the money that stays within the local area gets more… and more.
Generally speaking, 80p of every £1 spent with independents stays in the local economy. With chains, it’s around 20-30p and with online-only multi-nationals it’s close to £0.
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 you know the value of keeping it “Totally Locally”.
It’s also a lot easier! The big thing is telling your customers what you’re doing, and why this is important… which is where we can help with the Magic Tenner Campaign.
*The New Economics Foundation – Plugging the Leaks
Here’s a little drawing by those West Bridgeford Types:
In the kit you will find posters, where you can write in how many suppliers, producers and people who work with you.
This includes your window cleaner, accountant even where you buy your sandwiches every day (that’s a lot of sandwiches going into the local economy!).
Just sit down and work out how many you have – you’ll be surprised. (Then see if you can add a couple more ;-))
You can use the posters to create a “Tenner Trail” with special offers, or as part of a festival etc, or you can just put them up in your shop.
They make a good talking point, just make sure you have worked out the whole concept of £10 becoming £50 when spent locally. The money goes round and round by each of the independent shops spending with other independent shops and businesses. Here it is…. in video form – it makes it a lot easier to grasp!
You can copy and paste any of the wording above to put on your website / Facebook page or anywhere you like, or you can show the video at a talk or get together.
In the Kit there are also some bag ‘stuffers‘ / bookmarks, for you to print out. You can add them to people’s bags when they buy something or staple them to receipts. And it says thank you. Which is nice!
And that’s MAGIC!
