Working with local businesses

Successfully working with local businesses is very important for Transition initiatives. Yet it may not come naturally, and we are likely to need to learn a new language, new concepts, and a new way of connecting.

This ingredient provides a few examples of Transition initiatives working with their local businesses. Early in the life of Transition Town Totnes, workshops were run with local businesses using the NISP (National Industrial Symbiosis Programme) model, which brings together local businesses in a workshop to look at how best they can match their outputs with another’s needs. Happily, they were from the same industrial estate, and the kinds of connections made included a business with lots of cardboard boxes to dispose of working with a local removal firm who need cardboard boxes. This was very productive.

Some places have set up local loyalty schemes to encourage people to use local shops. Caterham has the Caterham Shop Smart Card,[i] for which people pay a small membership, the card entitling them to up to 20 per cent off produce from shops. The card is accepted in over 60 shops, many of whom run promotions based around the card. People signing up for the card get the first two months’ membership free. A scheme like Caterham’s can appeal to more conservative local traders who feel the idea of a local currency (see Tools for Transition No.19: Tools for plugging the leaks, page xx) is a bit extreme.

Local currencies can also be a great way of drawing in local businesses. Transition Town Lewes’s Lewes Pound features on the back of the note a list of the key local businesses that support and endorse the pound. The launch of the Lewes Pound was attended by many local tradespeople. The local brewery, Harveys, one of the businesses named on the notes, brewed a commemorative beer called ‘Quids In’ to celebrate the launch. At the launch of Transition Town Brixton’s Brixton Pound, one wall of the venue featured a display of all the businesses that had agreed to accept the pound.

The next step is to create a local food strategy for the Forest, with the network of local food businesses that was formed from the first year’s work. This approach, of meeting local businesses on their own terms and then inviting them to be part of larger-scale thinking, has much to recommend it.

On a smaller scale, in 2010 Transition Cambridge ran a story-writing competition sponsored by local businesses. They also advertise a new Transition-related business in each of their newsletters and, like the New Forest, are creating a Google Map of local food businesses.[iv]

Five tips for engaging local businesses in Transition

by Fiona Ward of Transition Training and Consulting

• Be credible: You need to speak their language, look right for the setting, and understand basic business concepts such as revenue, profit margins, fixed/variable costs, etc.
• Be open-minded: Do not criticise their business decisions. Present facts, not opinions. Accept their assumptions and gain trust and credibility before introducing new ideas.
• Be realistic: Realise that the bottom line is key, even in environmentally minded businesses – if they’re not at least breaking even they will not be around to do their work more sustainably. Also, small businesses have very little time or money to do anything other than survive. Even if they want to do the ‘right’ thing, they may not have the time to be actively involved. You’ll need to be creative and adaptable about how you work with each one.
• ‘Sell’ the benefits: Be very clear about the benefits to the business of whatever it is you want to do with them – be they financial, environmental or social. 
• Tell stories: Case studies of other credible, local/well-known businesses are very powerful, so long as the people you are presenting these to can relate to the size or type of business. Try to work first of all with a small number of friendly but influential local businesses, create good success stories with quantifiable benefits, and they will then attract others. Explore Transition Network’s list of projects[v] for inspiration by seeing how other Transition places are working with local businesses.

Another good strategy is to ensure that your Transition initiative has a Business and Livelihoods working group, which creates a forum for local businesspeople and acts as an incubator for ideas and projects.

Transition in Action: Engaging the New Forest’s food business community

A Transition initiative might decide to promote one particular aspect of the local business community. In April 2009, New Forest Transition (NFT) launched the New Forest Food Challenge,[ii] funded by the National Park Authority. Although an NFT initiative, it was deliberately branded without much reference to the organisation, and was set up to support local food businesses. After a year’s imaginative promotion of local food across the area (which included creating a local food Google Map[iii]), they held a ‘Local Food Summit’ on 30 September 2010. It brought together 70 people who represented over 30 local businesses, as well as members of the district council, the National Park Authority and the local MP, to look at how local food could regenerate the local economy. All who attended signalled a commitment to helping, and a framework for moving forward was agreed.

Transition in Action: Transition Chepstow’s Plastic Bag Free initiative

by Janet Rawlings

Transition Chepstow’s first project was the Plastic Bag Free Chepstow initiative, which replaced plastic bags with a cloth one. It was the brainchild of a local businesswoman and was developed with the social enterprise that ran Monmouthshire’s kerbside recycling service – Monmouthshire Community Recycling. The ‘My Chepstow Bag’ was made of Fairtrade, organic cotton and featured a design by a local artist.

Local businesses promised to reduce the number of plastic bags they handed out and received My Chepstow Bags as a substitute. We followed up the bag give-away with a prize draw in the local paper to encourage people to remember to take their bags with them when they went shopping. The Free Press was running a ‘Shop Local’ series, and we joined in by offering a fortnightly prize (£10 gift voucher in a local shop) for people photographed shopping local with their My Chepstow Bag.

It certainly got Transition Chepstow’s name known, increased reusable shopping bag use in Chepstow and helped local traders reduce one of their overheads. We hope the introduction of the carrier bag levy in Wales will put an end to plastic bag use, as it has in Ireland. The project was supported by grants from Environment Wales and Keep Wales Tidy. [UBP]