Stepping up our local e-commerce economy would drive people to live here, shop here, and visit here. We would keep our dollars local and help our favorite businesses thrive. 

Joe: I was speaking at the Chamber of Commerce. I asked two questions and asked the businesses to raise their hand. The two questions were, do you use Google results page when you as a customer are looking to buy or shop, and the other question was do you use Amazon , Wal-Mart , Best Buy , those kinds of websites, when you’re shopping to compare prices and all that kind of stuff. Everyone raised their hand and I asked every business to keep their hand up if their business is committed to making sure that their customers can shop the same way they like to shop. And you know what everybody did. Everyone put their hands down. And so that’s the idea of project hometown is there is this massive gap between the way when we go shopping and the way we allow our customers to shop. Can your customers find out if you have inventory in stock? I personally am going to buy beard oil locally if I can find it in stock.

Chauncey: Here is my defense of the business. If I own a Chinese restaurant the one thing that I will never search for, because I have plenty, is Chinese food. So they’re never actually searching for their own business service because they already have that. So you might do a little bit of asking around in your family or you might try to pretend you’re a customer every once in a while.

Joe: Yeah that’s a really good point. Well, I think we’re all a little guilty of this. You ask a guy in search engine optimization how their sites going and they will say I don’t know, we’re looking at our client sites and frankly, we don’t have time. They never considered that this was a way people shop and that there is that, as a business that we need to adjust. If I would have asked that question five years ago everyone would not have raised their hand. We didn’t all use Google and e-commerce sites five years ago. And so the reality is change. Customers changed how they buy. So you have to change how you sell in other things.

You know customers are looking for specific product features or want to compare or they’re looking for inspiration. That’s what Project Hometown is. It is a very organized and concerted effort to take away any excuses that businesses are having in selling the way customers want to buy and add a tremendous amount of resources. At this point, just about every business, organization, The Redding Chamber of Commerce , Shasta EDC , The Smart Center , Reach Higher Shasta , and Nortec are all supporting, helping, and a part of Project Hometown. The local marketing companies, Chauncey’s marketing company, my marketing company, and Pacific Sky.

They’re all coming to this to allow the resources to be available. High schools are training their kids through Cloud Wise Academy to help businesses get this done. I think I have a hard time explaining because it’s gotten bigger than the name Project hometown and got bigger than my idea. Essentially the entire business community and support system have come together to make this happen. And all that’s missing are the businesses that they have to get involved. So if you’re listening and you’re a business, start by going to Project Hometown and like the Facebook page so we can keep you posted but also go to the projecthometown.com and just sign up.

So real quick what we would do for you if you became part of Project Hometown. Well, there are really three phases every business has to go through if they’re going to make the Internet part of their selling process and that is to be connected. That means that their products or services have to be in those places where there is an e-commerce site or Google or Yelp or Amazon, wherever people are looking for those products. Got to be there to get connected to get set up. Secondly, you have to be found and there are things to being found you have to do and then the third one is yet to amplify. You have to make it work better and better and better. And so Project Hometown is dedicated to educating on all three. But we’ve also come together as a technology community to make that first step happen.

So anyone involved, any of the technology companies involved, we welcome more to come. We’re all going to follow a certain set of guidelines to get your local business connected to the Internet. We all are given a set of guidelines on how to build an e-commerce store, how many products, how to do it. What rules follows what plugins to put in the whole thing. And we’re going to do that for you. Now you do have to pay $500 if you’re a regular website and $750 if your e-commerce site.

Let me tell you why you have to pay. These high school kids are going through an internship in a mentoring program with a local business. The local technology community is donating their time to help train these kids so that they can go out and help more companies, beyond what our technology companies can do.  So half that money goes to a high school kid to start making money and helping businesses and half that money is going to go to technology companies.

Chauncey: During the economic recession and everything, towns that weren’t so heavily dependent on these big box stores, well their economies were not hit nearly as hard because they had strong local economies. And that’s really kind of the goal here.

Joe: What would happen if 17,000 Redding businesses ( about how many are registered ) all of the sudden had a strong online business presence. Not just a Website. Imagine if they were actually selling their services and products where people want to buy. Redding would be a beacon to the rest of the world as a place to buy. Google and other search engines would notice Shasta County. We would make our own citizens happier because they could buy local and they can sell locally. They could find stuff that they want to buy and we would keep our dollars local. How impressive it would be if this community raised the bar like no other community. I mean we could rival the Bay Area or even do better. Imagine how much national attention we would get. 

So this is a big deal. In most cases, if you’re a business you can join Project Hometown. You can go through Project hometown’s program. if you’re a technology company you can help support it. If you’re trained in e-commerce and want to help. Get in touch with us. Let’s get this done.

Chauncey: Well you’re right. You’re refining the message. Everybody’s wants to shop local and local business wants to sell locally. You know this is all helping our hometown economy. What we’re doing is creating awareness for the local community.

Joe: We were in a committee meeting forming project hometown someone said  “I’m tired of people telling me to buy local! Like it’s my responsibility. Local businesses you’re not doing anything to make it so I can buy local.”  In other words, all the responsibility is on the consumer. Local businesses are not making it easy to shop locally. Stop telling me as a consumer that it’s my problem, it is not my problem it’s your problem as a business owner. Make it easy for me to buy. Let me see if you have stuff in stock. Let me see what hours you’re open. Help me buy from your business.

Joe: I’m telling you right now if you’re in business then you already know this because you’ve passed a line, you’re one of the few. It’s important to realize that you can only stay in business if you are adding value and doing something that makes your customers lives better. This is your responsibility as a business owner to help people buy local.

Help make it worth the customer’s time and effort to buy local. It’s up to you.  Get in contact with us, join the movement!  www.projecthometown.com

President, Shasta Economic Development Corporation

If all of our businesses do this, our community presence can be greatly amplified through digital marketing, creating a beacon of commerce in the global digital marketplace. Together, we are more powerful. Join the movement. Make Shasta County standout in the global marketplace. Let’s brand ourselves as the community that serves our whole country and the rest if the world. We can create an Amazon-like presence for our community. Learn how to be a part of making us different, better, and more profitable as individual businesses, and as an amplified collaborative community, in this new and emerging world of opportunity. Let’s be the innovative community that gains our advantage in the market while other communities embrace the status quo. Let’s roll!