Jon Johnson Photo/Gila Herald: Graham County Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Vance Bryce welcomes attendees to its open house event Thursday.
Out with the old and in with the new at Chamber event
By Jon Johnson
SAFFORD – The changes keep coming from the Graham County Chamber of Commerce, spearheaded by new Executive Director Vance Bryce and his marketing director, Brianna Morris, who lead a fresh and social-media savvy new Chamber.
On Thursday, the Chamber held an open house event featuring Kimber Lanning from Local First Arizona and showcased the new look and new attitude of the Graham County Chamber of Commerce. The event was standing-room-only as business luminaries and local government officials packed the Chamber.
“What we’re trying to do here is collaborate – getting more people to the table who should be at the table (and) new people who have never been at the table,” Bryce said. “I think what the chamber needs to be is a real place where there’s trust – a place where we go to each other to solve business problems.”
After stagnating for so long, the Chamber has cleared out its space – with historical items being donated to a museum to be built at Eastern Arizona College’s (EAC) Discovery Park Campus and other items being relocated there as well. The room will now feature new displays from EAC, the Bureau of Land Management, and Freeport McMoRan Inc., highlighting the Chamber’s partners and extolling on what the area affords to visitors.
The event also was a sounding board for local businesses to reiterate the importance of doing business locally. The Chamber has launched a new localism campaign and is pushing doing business locally as much as possible.
Bryce and the Chamber walked the walk as well, utilizing local businesses to cater the dinner for the event, including Carter’s Custom Cuts for the meat for the hamburgers, Cottage Bakery for the rolls, and more. Bryce himself was even spotted picking vegetables from Our Neighbors Farm and Pantry for the fixings.
During her talk, Lanning advised that for every $100 spent at a locally-owned business, $43 remains in the economy versus only $13 for every $100 spent at a non-locally owned business. She also pointed out that independent retailers also create more jobs with 110 jobs created for every $10 million in sales versus only 50 jobs for chain retailers and just 14 jobs for Amazon.
“We want to help both our local businesses and communities establish a unique position in the marketplace,” Lanning said. “You have so much to offer here from a tourism perspective, an education perspective – this community is absolutely a STEM community. You have so much in the way of science, technology, and engineering, and math right here in Graham County – more so than any other community this size in the state of Arizona.”
Lanning also spoke about her own success story in Phoenix in which she opened up her art gallery in a blighted area with nothing around it and within 12 years the same area now boasts 22 galleries, five restaurants, three wine bars, two coffee shops, four retailers and has its own light-rail stop. The area now has its own nickname, “Roosevelt Row” and its “First Friday” events – held the first Friday of the month featuring artists and music – has grown from about 100 visitors to 30,000 for each event.
“That is the story of the power of small, local businesses and how we can work together to transform neighborhoods to eliminate blight,” Lanning said. “We reduced crime by 64 percent in that neighborhood because we were eyes on the street.”
Other local business leaders also spoke at the event and encouraged local business, including Kip Kempton of Kempton Chevrolet and Reed Richins of Double R Communications, who reiterated his claim that he has never set foot inside the local Walmart store because he refuses to do business with the corporate giant.
“As small business people, I quite frankly believe that each and every one of us are completely under assault by large businesses that we can’t possibly control,” Kempton said. “We’re in a David and Goliath situation.”
Catch Bryce and Morris’ exploits on the Graham County Chamber of Commerce’s Facebook page as they promote local businesses and events.
