GTBA Looking to Give Local Retail a Boost

is looking to help re-energize the retail industry throughout the township with a series of seminars, with the first taking place Monday night, June 27 at in Historic Smithville. The seminar takes place from 6 to 8 p.m.

“It’s going to be an interactive and introspective workshop,” Galloway Township Business Association President Steve Moliver said. “Smithville merchants and the Smithville owners on both sides asked us to facilitate this. It’s something that’s designed to help in an educational forum.”

The first seminar is designed to help the individual owners grasp a better understanding of how to manage their individual business via a survey of between 15 and 30 questions.

“It will be a panel presentation with feedback,” Moliver said. ‘Everyone will have a garage-door sized clicker, and as we go through the presentation, we’ll be asking questions, and they can use the clickers to respond. It will all be anonymous.”

The system that will be used is called Turning Technologies.

The GTBA will be the lead facilitator for the event, and it will be partnering with the Small Business Association’s regional office in New Jersey; the New Jersey Small Business Development Center, a program of the based out of the Carnegie Library; and SCORE, a national peer-to-peer organization of professionals.

The seminars are focused strictly on retail businesses throughout Galloway Township.

The questions will be multiple-choice, yes-no, or use a ratings scale, and will cover issues such as which media do owners use to promote their businesses and specifics on their business plans.

“We’ll ask them do you use print media, broadcast radio, broadcast TV or Internet sites to promote your business,” Moliver said. “Some of them might say, ‘I don’t do any of that,’ and that might give them pause.”

Moliver said future seminars will be based on responses to the questions from the business owners, focusing on the specific issues troubling those who attend and respond to the survey.

“We’ll have breakout workshops,” Moliver said. “If we find that the business owners need help with social media marketing, we’ll have a workshop on that.

“Some businesses deal with customers from other areas, so they might have to advertise to Lacey, Berkley or the Cherry Hill area. If a retailer gets ZIP codes from their customers, they know where to gear their marketing efforts.”

The Fitzgerald and Coppola families, who each own half of , have also spoken of the need to better promote Smithville as a whole, Moliver said.

Currently, entering into a business partnership with Smithville involves speaking with the individual businesses. There is no formal association.

"Not that it's right or wrong," Moliver said. "“If (joint promotion) is a byproduct of what we do, that would be great."

“We’re getting the businesses there to network them and hope it takes on a flight of its own.”