Article/Post Written by Natalie McDonald – Senior News Editor at LinkedIn news
Cast your mind back 12 months. Tourism Australia had launched a new $20m initiative encouraging Aussies to holiday locally, NAB had given its 30,000 employees an additional day of annual leave and a list of bushfire-stricken towns to visit, and three passionate women launched Spend With Us — a marketplace designed to help support business owners in rural communities who had suffered through fire, flood and drought.
It’s incredible to think that there was also a new threat on the horizon that few small (and large) business could have been prepared for: coronavirus. One year on, we look at how initiatives like Spend With Us continue to aid SMBs.
As many areas continue to struggle, we want to hear from you. How have you continued to support small businesses at this time? Perhaps you’re in a bushfire-affected region. How have you seen your local businesses impacted in the 12 months since? Leave your thoughts in the comments below and join the conversation.
Australia’s Bushfire Crisis One Year on: Are you still buying from the bush?
Rewind 12 months. Tourism Australia had launched a new $20m initiative to encourage Australians to holiday locally, as part of the federal government’s $76m tourism recovery package. National Australia Bank had given its 30,000 employees an additional day of annual leave and a list of bushfire-stricken towns to visit in a bid to undo the damage of a catastrophic bushfire season, and what became known as the ‘worst summer ever’.
It also marked the launch of Spend With Us – Buy From a Bush Business Marketplace. The brainchild of Central Coast web designer Sarah Britz, Victorian clinical psychologist Lauren Hateley and Riverina-based marketer Jenn Donovan, the marketplace was designed to help support business owners in rural communities who had suffered through fire, flood and drought.
But there was also a new threat on the horizon, one that Jenn Donovan admits “noone could have been prepared for”: coronavirus.
Sarah Britz said, “Lots of small-town retailers don’t have e-commerce sites or digital strategies, so we’ve created a way for them to be online without all the hassle, something which has proved invaluable in preserving the income of many small businesses as they were forced to close their doors to customers due to Covid-19. The shop local and shop small movements have gained momentum during the pandemic and the Australian spirit of helping each other remains as strong as ever.”
One year on, Spend With Us has onboarded more than 800 rural and regional small businesses to the platform and helped generate a quarter of a million sales income through the website marketplace for Australia’s small businesses.
“Whilst the pandemic has highlighted Australia’s reliance on imported goods, it amplified our willingness to support local economies and other Australians doing it tough,” says Donovan.
