The first National Fiver Fest in 2022 was a cracker! We are again bowled over by the enthusiasm, creativity and sheer willpower of everyone who took part in Fiver Fest. It’s heart-warming to see so much support for our high streets and independent businesses considering the testing times we live in.
#FiverFestDogs emerged out of nowhere in similar way to #DogsAtPollingStations. A goat even gate-crashed the trend.
A special mention goes to all the hard-working organisers in each town, we know how much work it is to organise! In particular, Tony Davey who not only organised Fiver Fest in Stroud but also 4 neighbouring towns!
Your World Financial Services in Birchington in addition to gifting a £5 offer from a local business with each free consultation also shut-up shop each lunchtime, headed out with a bunch of fivers to boost their local economy and had a blast doing this!
100 towns took part this time which is a tenth of the total number of UK towns of approximately 1,000. We don’t know exactly how many businesses took part in each town but we an average of around 30 per town, that makes around 3,000 businesses overall. If you added up all the £5 spend messages from each town, it would equate to a whopping £606 million if every adult in Fiver Fest towns spent just £5 a week with indies!
Also in Birchington, Monty’s posted this nice ‘dictionary definition’ of Fiver Fest which was nice. They’re right though, it can be habit forming. We are quietly confident that once locals discover a local businesses through Fiver Fest, they’ll probably keep popping back to spend even more than a fiver a week so this figure will be higher.
There were lots of new Fiver Fest towns this time, in particular in Scotland. Here’s a fabulous video from the team at Totally Locally Dunfermline listing all Fiver Fest offers and businesses. We’re loving the enthusiasm!
Elsewhere feedback has been great from places like Chapel Allerton where businesses are super supportive of each other, often posting each other’s offers in windows. Armadillo Toys reported selling over 800 offers!
There was also heaps of enthusiasm from Totally Locally Clay Cross and Fiver Fest was so successful, local traders who organised and took part all had an afternoon tea as a get-together, how nice is that!
You can read more feedback from the last Fiver Fest and others here