The Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors met Mar. 4th, 2010 at 7:30 at the VFW Building.
Membership Dues: Dues are now $40.00 and may be paid at the Chamber Office or mailed to the Chamber of Commerce @ PO Box 303. Our Annual Banquet is coming up so you can also pay at the banquet.
Website: Let us know if you would like to see something new or would like to link your website to the Chambers (At no Charge). Let Elbert know of any changes or additions.
Flag Promotion: Kip is in the process of selling more Flags for the downtown area, if you are interested in this promotion for your business gives him a call.
Annual Chamber Banquet: Our banquet will be March 27th 2010 at the Adrian Optimist Building. The Adrian FCCLA Chapter will be serving the meal and the cost is going to be $12.00 per person. The evening will start with a mixer @ 6:00pm and Dinner @ 6:30pm. The speaker will be Mike Haughton from SCORE; he will speak on marketing of small businesses. We will also have our annual Door Prizes. All Chamber members are invited to donate items from their business, a gag gift or something of their choosing to be drawn for during evening.
BAT: The next BAT will be on March 12th, 2010 at Wimfield’s on Main, with the VFW hosting. Don Arndt has offered to speak to the chamber members about the memorial that they are in the process of building just east of Adrian. If you haven’t had a chance to talk to someone concerning this project this would be a great BAT to attend. Wimfield’s will be offering either their Friday special or a nice Lunch Salad.
Highlights: March – Mid-West Lumber April – Max Motors
New Business:
Farmer’s Market: Plans are underway for the upcoming season for the Farmer’s Market. The market will run May thru November. Since we had to change our location we are going to try and start running some ads in April to help promote the market and the Adrian Journal said they would run an article on the Farmer’s Market in the newspaper also.
Business Expo: We are thinking about having a Business Expo and will be sending out an e-mail asking for interest in this event. If you are interested in this and would like to learn more you can contact Phil Oates.
Why should a business or organization join the Chamber of Commerce? This topic was brought up to one of our board members, and her question was what should I tell them? What are the advantages or disadvantages of joining the chamber?
Our Motto is “ Strong Roots, Growing Branches” , with our mission statement being, the goal of the chamber is to provide support for local businesses and to encourage the growth of these businesses as well as recruit new business to Adrian.
With this being said we discussed, as always that our website is a very useful tool for the benefit of our members as well as updating a current brochure that we have that we could distribute to potential members. As we mention in our mission statement we encourage growth and are here to support our local businesses.
As you can see we covered a lot of topics at this month’s meeting. Again remember our Quarterly BAT meeting and our Annual Banquet coming up this month. As I mentioned last month if there is anything that the Chamber can do for you please don’t hesitate to let one of our Board members know and we will do what we can to help you or your business out.
Continue to support your businesses locally and support your Chamber.
Lori Haskins, President