Battlefords Business Calendar offers stories from local businesses. (ID 95262702 © Fortton | Dreamstime.com)

By Keaton Brown

keep it local

Battlefords Business Advent Calendar provides 24 unique stories from local businesses

Dec 19, 2019 | 1:11 PM

With only five more shopping days before Christmas, the Battlefords Business Advent Calendar is a great resource for finding local businesses.

The Battlefords Business Advent Calendar runs for 24 days in December and each day highlights a different local business owner, their story and their store.

Each day also comes with a special promotion from the business that is being highlighted for the day.

Alexis Christensen, the organizer of the advent calendar, said this was a great opportunity to expose more people to local businesses around the holiday season.

“I wanted to do this in a fun way. So instead of just promoting sales or highlighting a business, I thought I would tell the stories of the actual people behind the businesses,” she said.

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The calendar is now on its second year and Christensen said it was an immediate hit within the community.

“I started it last year and it sold out in 24 hours, people liked the idea of it. This year I ran it again and again it sold out. I just wanted to inspire people to think local first and these [business owners] are the people who buy the spots in our kid’s sports programs. These are the people who lift up our community,” she said.

The advent calendar is run from its Facebook page. Battlefords residents are encouraged to like and follow the page to stay up to date with each new calendar day. Christensen said they have been getting a lot of people showing interest online who enjoy reading the stories about each business.

“There will be anywhere from 3,000 to 12,000 views. I have been getting a lot of feedback from people saying they didn’t know the people behind the business and like reading their stories. We are saying these are real people in our community and they are important and we need to support them,” she said.

The advent calendar has also been successful at generating business for the participants. Christensen said that the majority of the feedback she has been getting from the business owners has been positive.

“I know that it has boosted sales. On Beauty Spot Lash Bar day, they sold $2,300 in gift cards that day, which was their promotion. That wasn’t the point of the calendar, but it is nice to see that people are interested in what we’re doing,” she said.

The Battlefords Business Advent Calendar will continue to profile a local business each day until Christmas Eve on December 24.

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Keaton.brown@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @battlefordsnow