We’re combining the entry for the last two days.
The reason for this is that classes have both started up for us again, and that takes away from our time spent each day to the project.
However, that does not impede our schedule, as we planned the project accordingly from day one.
On Tuesday we interviewed Kelly Parke, owner of Ace Apparel and Body Piercing.
We feel her story as a Main Street business is very compelling and really shows that determination and self-discipline will lead to prosperity.
That theme is consistent with all the businesses that we contact on Main Street.
Each business has a different purpose, a different owner, and arguably different values. No matter how we categorize each business, hard work and dedication are a constant.
And with that, we transition into Wednesday.
Today, we were able to speak with Kim Holland and Hildi Neff, co-owners of Lotus Clothing & Jewelry Design about their perspective on Main Street and committing to environmentally sound purchasing. They also have a commitment to working with other small companies internationally, rather than large factories, and in the case of American made goods in their stores, they aim to work with companies in the Pacific Northwest.
And for them, their business goes beyond passion. It’s a source of satisfaction. Both owners have a personal interest in world traveling, and though their work does not take them to every single place they’d like to go, it does afford them the opportunity to go many places on their personal checklists.
Getting back to Lotus’ commitment to buy from other small, independent businesses for a moment. We both find that this strategy is truly beneficial for all within a given “Main Street’ community. What better way to show your support for your own community but to buy from other independent businesses.
It could be a store next door that sells cleaning supplies that are created 50 miles down the road. Or from a little known company in Mongolia that sells commercial furniture. Granted these are fictitious examples, but the point being that when independent business supports independent business, the largest form of support in the chain is complete.
Next comes ensuring the customer base swells. If we believe that one good deed leads to another, maybe it’s only a matter of time.
But we still see Main Street in Ellensburg as a thriving commerce corridor, and so do the business owners.
It may not be ideal, but it’s in a very good position, and maybe because it’s not ideal makes it something worth fighting for.
Until tomorrow!
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Monday, March 29, 2010
A New Week!
Happy Monday all!
Over the weekend the two of us worked on researching Main Street as a theory, specifically reading several books on the subject of small towns, independent businesses and how the two can sustain one another in harmony.
A few of the titles are Boomtown USA: The 7 ½ Keys to Big Success in Small Towns by Jack Schultz, The Small-Mart Revolution: How Local Business Are Beating the Global Competition by Michael H. Shuman and Growing Local Value: How To Build Business Partnerships That Strengthen Your Community by Laury Hammel and Gun Denhart.
We have plenty of reading still to go, but we both get the sense of what has been working for small communities, but more importantly what hasn’t.
And that transitions us into a fantastic interview we conducted with Mia Peterson this afternoon. She is an extremely business-savvy woman and we both walked away from our time with her having learned something about entrepreneurship and the conclusion that she is a tremendous asset to Ellensburg, and could be an asset anywhere.
We’ve both been excited since we dreamt up this project, but not a day passes that we don’t reach a new level of excitement and the interview we had today only continued that trend.
Mia asked for our help with a small task related to her business as well, and we were happy to oblige.
And aside from her knowledge on her industry and retail operation, she is also extremely knowledgeable on building design, both interior and exterior.
And she also has great understanding of the concept of branding and what it means from a community perspective.
We’re looking forward to continue our work with Mia and seeing what she has planned for the future, because we both know that she is an important voice to this community.
We wrapped up the day working on press releases for some of the different organizations involved in our project and getting paperwork in order.
They say cleanliness is close to Godliness. I wonder if organization is included in that statement.
Until tomorrow!
Over the weekend the two of us worked on researching Main Street as a theory, specifically reading several books on the subject of small towns, independent businesses and how the two can sustain one another in harmony.
A few of the titles are Boomtown USA: The 7 ½ Keys to Big Success in Small Towns by Jack Schultz, The Small-Mart Revolution: How Local Business Are Beating the Global Competition by Michael H. Shuman and Growing Local Value: How To Build Business Partnerships That Strengthen Your Community by Laury Hammel and Gun Denhart.
We have plenty of reading still to go, but we both get the sense of what has been working for small communities, but more importantly what hasn’t.
And that transitions us into a fantastic interview we conducted with Mia Peterson this afternoon. She is an extremely business-savvy woman and we both walked away from our time with her having learned something about entrepreneurship and the conclusion that she is a tremendous asset to Ellensburg, and could be an asset anywhere.
We’ve both been excited since we dreamt up this project, but not a day passes that we don’t reach a new level of excitement and the interview we had today only continued that trend.
Mia asked for our help with a small task related to her business as well, and we were happy to oblige.
And aside from her knowledge on her industry and retail operation, she is also extremely knowledgeable on building design, both interior and exterior.
And she also has great understanding of the concept of branding and what it means from a community perspective.
We’re looking forward to continue our work with Mia and seeing what she has planned for the future, because we both know that she is an important voice to this community.
We wrapped up the day working on press releases for some of the different organizations involved in our project and getting paperwork in order.
They say cleanliness is close to Godliness. I wonder if organization is included in that statement.
Until tomorrow!
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Friday!
Hello again!
Today’s activities were a little more organizational than the rest of the week.
We started by conducting interviews with John and Brad Fitterer of Fitterer’s Furniture in the morning.
That went quite well, we received a lot of information about sustaining an independent business on Main Street throughout economic peaks and valleys.
We then had our weekly “wrap-up” meeting with Timothy Bishop, CMSM and the Executive Director of the EDA.
We then had a break in the action and posted two businesses to the Facebook group page found here Ellensburg Main Street 2010
We then returned to Main Street around 10:30 PM to photograph the street and store fronts at night.
We may return another time for night photography in the future, and we’ll keep everyone updated on that possibility.
The reason behind the night shots is just to show Main Street in a different “light” so to speak. It’s fair to say that any street in America lives one life during the day and another life at night.
When comparing to news reports on America’s financial outlook, I am surprised by the positive outlook by all the people we’ve come in contact with. If someone was to base their opinion of business in America off of the news, it would not be very good.
But what we are finding are business owners and employees who are excited by the positions they find themselves in now, and are ready to move forward.
The only time the recession has been mentioned is in past tense. Not one business we’ve talked to finds the situation to be impossible.
And with that, we sign off for the weekend.
See you on Monday!
Today’s activities were a little more organizational than the rest of the week.
We started by conducting interviews with John and Brad Fitterer of Fitterer’s Furniture in the morning.
That went quite well, we received a lot of information about sustaining an independent business on Main Street throughout economic peaks and valleys.
We then had our weekly “wrap-up” meeting with Timothy Bishop, CMSM and the Executive Director of the EDA.
We then had a break in the action and posted two businesses to the Facebook group page found here Ellensburg Main Street 2010
We then returned to Main Street around 10:30 PM to photograph the street and store fronts at night.
We may return another time for night photography in the future, and we’ll keep everyone updated on that possibility.
The reason behind the night shots is just to show Main Street in a different “light” so to speak. It’s fair to say that any street in America lives one life during the day and another life at night.
When comparing to news reports on America’s financial outlook, I am surprised by the positive outlook by all the people we’ve come in contact with. If someone was to base their opinion of business in America off of the news, it would not be very good.
But what we are finding are business owners and employees who are excited by the positions they find themselves in now, and are ready to move forward.
The only time the recession has been mentioned is in past tense. Not one business we’ve talked to finds the situation to be impossible.
And with that, we sign off for the weekend.
See you on Monday!
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Success!
It’s a fantastic Thursday afternoon!
The weather? Oh, it’s raining and overcast with a mid-40’s touch.
What makes it fantastic, is that the first set of photographs we sent to NPR’s project, Mapping Main Street were published into their "Main Street" slideshow.
When you click on the participate tab on their website, it brings up a slideshow on the right of the page and that’s where our photos are currently. Here’s a link to that page: Mapping Main Street 'Participate'
The site editor has not linked our photos to the category “Ellensburg, WA” so if you currently type in the city’s name into their search function, there is one photo from the EDA.
We are not sure what the time frame is on that task on their site, but seeing as their slideshow has the photos, it’s probably only a matter of time before we see our photos linked to “Ellensburg, WA.”
Stefanie started a Flickr account as well, and started uploading pictures that we have edited. It will take some time to edit every photo, but we are moving as fast as we can, and we will upload them as soon as they are ready. Here’s a link to her photo stream: Stefanie's Photo Stream
Today we also were able to complete our photography of Flirt/West Coast Men’s and Cedar Mountain Woodwrights. Matt ended up conducting an impromptu interview with Cedar Mountain’s owner Mike Bello, and was able to gather a lot of knowledge on the challenges a woodworker in today’s business climate faces.
We were able to photograph half of the Palace Cafe, and will be shooting the other half on another day, when there are less patrons. While we want to highlight the businesses are doing well, we don’t want to interrupt commerce with our project either.
We shot the front half of Ace Apparel’s store yesterday, but we will return next Tuesday to complete photography. They are remodeling some of their store, and also the store front, so we will re-shoot their business, and then publish those photos. It will be an interesting twist to the story we are putting together, showing a business before a remodel, and then after.
We are now moving into preliminary interviews, and have several lined up starting tomorrow and into next week.
These interviews will give us a framework for what kinds of questions we will be asking each business owner/representative.
We will also want to solicit some commentary from the general public, and we will update this blog when finalize the plan for that part of the project.
Happy Thursday, see you tomorrow!
The weather? Oh, it’s raining and overcast with a mid-40’s touch.
What makes it fantastic, is that the first set of photographs we sent to NPR’s project, Mapping Main Street were published into their "Main Street" slideshow.
When you click on the participate tab on their website, it brings up a slideshow on the right of the page and that’s where our photos are currently. Here’s a link to that page: Mapping Main Street 'Participate'
The site editor has not linked our photos to the category “Ellensburg, WA” so if you currently type in the city’s name into their search function, there is one photo from the EDA.
We are not sure what the time frame is on that task on their site, but seeing as their slideshow has the photos, it’s probably only a matter of time before we see our photos linked to “Ellensburg, WA.”
Stefanie started a Flickr account as well, and started uploading pictures that we have edited. It will take some time to edit every photo, but we are moving as fast as we can, and we will upload them as soon as they are ready. Here’s a link to her photo stream: Stefanie's Photo Stream
Today we also were able to complete our photography of Flirt/West Coast Men’s and Cedar Mountain Woodwrights. Matt ended up conducting an impromptu interview with Cedar Mountain’s owner Mike Bello, and was able to gather a lot of knowledge on the challenges a woodworker in today’s business climate faces.
We were able to photograph half of the Palace Cafe, and will be shooting the other half on another day, when there are less patrons. While we want to highlight the businesses are doing well, we don’t want to interrupt commerce with our project either.
We shot the front half of Ace Apparel’s store yesterday, but we will return next Tuesday to complete photography. They are remodeling some of their store, and also the store front, so we will re-shoot their business, and then publish those photos. It will be an interesting twist to the story we are putting together, showing a business before a remodel, and then after.
We are now moving into preliminary interviews, and have several lined up starting tomorrow and into next week.
These interviews will give us a framework for what kinds of questions we will be asking each business owner/representative.
We will also want to solicit some commentary from the general public, and we will update this blog when finalize the plan for that part of the project.
Happy Thursday, see you tomorrow!
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Hitting the pavement
Chris and Matt discussing high-tech business in a small townHello again!
Another day down and more progress made.
We are continuing to photograph downtown, our focus as of late is the interiors of each business profiled.
We still have some exterior shooting to complete, but we are waiting for some stores to complete remodel work.
We also completed our first preliminary interview, and that was with Chris Schmidt of KValley Computers & Internet.
It was a fantastic interview, and we really appreciate Chris taking time out of his schedule to chat for awhile.
We’ve both conducted a lot of interviews over our time, and we both agree that Chris’s was one of the best we’ve seen or been a part of.
We have posted a picture from the interview with Chris here in this blog entry.
We will be posting the remainder of the pictures to the Flickr account as soon as we can!
We’re also developing workshops for businesses and consumers on how to use Foursquare, a social media app that allows consumers to inform their friends about places they frequent rapidly.
If you’d like to learn more about it go to Foursquare to learn more. Send a friend request to Matthew Ballantyne and Stefanie Burger while you're there!
The weather couldn't be better as we're doing this first and second phase of work, and we are anticipating getting the first phase done this week!
We're lining up more dates for interviews, and should have a great framework for the final part relatively soon.
More in store for tomorrow!
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Main Street photos being posted.....NOW!
Hey Hey!
Just a quick note on the photography we are capturing.
We've started posting photos on Flickr, a photo sharing site that is part of Yahoo!
The reason for this, is that the national Mapping Main Street program is using Flickr to capture all photos used to document all Main Streets throughout America.
The photos are being posted through Matt's Flickr account, here is a link: FreeOperator.
Please understand that we will upload photos as fast as we can, Flickr does have a limit to how many can be uploaded per month, so we will try to get as many up as possible.
You can find all the photos there, but if you want to see what Mapping Main Street uses, follow their group page by going here: Mapping Main Street Group also, you can see the final results of their selections at this site: MappingMainStreet Website.
We'll be sending sets of the photos all over the internet as well, including the Ellensburg Downtown Association's group page on Facebook: EDA Group Page.
Stay tuned for more!
Just a quick note on the photography we are capturing.
We've started posting photos on Flickr, a photo sharing site that is part of Yahoo!
The reason for this, is that the national Mapping Main Street program is using Flickr to capture all photos used to document all Main Streets throughout America.
The photos are being posted through Matt's Flickr account, here is a link: FreeOperator.
Please understand that we will upload photos as fast as we can, Flickr does have a limit to how many can be uploaded per month, so we will try to get as many up as possible.
You can find all the photos there, but if you want to see what Mapping Main Street uses, follow their group page by going here: Mapping Main Street Group also, you can see the final results of their selections at this site: MappingMainStreet Website.
We'll be sending sets of the photos all over the internet as well, including the Ellensburg Downtown Association's group page on Facebook: EDA Group Page.
Stay tuned for more!
Monday, March 22, 2010
Main Street, Ellensburg (USA)
Welcome!
We are excited you are here to read our journey down Main Street, Ellensburg.
This blog is an account of a tremendous project in recording and detailing the true state of America, found on Main Streets throughout.
Many media outlets make a reference to "Main Street vs. Wall Street" as they dissect the problems occurring in the stock market.
But as they detail the exchange, they forget to talk about the other half of the reference, and that is Main Street, USA.
Follow along as Matthew Ballantyne and Stefanie Burger document an actual Main Street, in the heart of Washington State, Ellensburg.
Our focus will be on businesses within 3rd and 4th Avenue, and they will show a living, breathing street that envokes community, commerce, and ingenuity.
Rich in history and culture, Ellensburg joins classic country living with innovative entreprenuership creating an environment that is truly second to none.
In the next coming months, we will be working directly with area businesses to show Americans and Washingtonians alike, that historic Main Streets are the heart and soul of this country.
Come along as we embark on a beautiful journey through historic downtown Ellensburg!
We are excited you are here to read our journey down Main Street, Ellensburg.
This blog is an account of a tremendous project in recording and detailing the true state of America, found on Main Streets throughout.
Many media outlets make a reference to "Main Street vs. Wall Street" as they dissect the problems occurring in the stock market.
But as they detail the exchange, they forget to talk about the other half of the reference, and that is Main Street, USA.
Follow along as Matthew Ballantyne and Stefanie Burger document an actual Main Street, in the heart of Washington State, Ellensburg.
Our focus will be on businesses within 3rd and 4th Avenue, and they will show a living, breathing street that envokes community, commerce, and ingenuity.
Rich in history and culture, Ellensburg joins classic country living with innovative entreprenuership creating an environment that is truly second to none.
In the next coming months, we will be working directly with area businesses to show Americans and Washingtonians alike, that historic Main Streets are the heart and soul of this country.
Come along as we embark on a beautiful journey through historic downtown Ellensburg!
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