2008 Buy Local Week is scheduled for December 1-7!

This year's 6th Annual Buy Local Week will feature even more fun and excitement than last year with the launch of our 1st ever Bid Local First! On-line auction featuring unique, one-of-a-kind local experiences.

Be sure to pick up a Winter Guide to Where the Locals Go!  The Guide will be distriubted in the Bellingham Herald on Monday, December 1st, in the Cascadia Weekly on Wednesday, December 3rd and in the Foothills Gazette on Friday, December 5th.  Guides can also be picked up at local businesses throughout Bellingham.

In the Guide you'll find listings of special sales, demonstrations, tastings, and fun events all taking place at your favorite local businesses, a peek at Bid Local First! Auction items and a long list of local, independent businesses. Click here for the list of specials.

Saturday, December 6th visit the Bellingham Farmers Market and test your luck with a spin of the Think Local First prize wheel. Lucky folks will receive the new 2009 Where the Locals Go! Coupon Book, bumper stickers, buttons and more. We'll even have balloons for the kids. Everyone's a winner when they Think Local First!

Also throughout the week, keep your eye out for the Be Local Bee!  She'll be handing out brand new 2009 Where the Locals! Coupon Books, stickers, and more!

Buy Local Week tips for Sustainable Connections members and participants in the Think Local First Campaign.

Here are some ideas;

• Use the Think Local First message and logo in your ads, on reader boards, on your invoices, on your website and brochures.

• Include information in newsletters. Share the importance of thinking local First. We can share samples and ideas.

• Be creative with the message. Use it on shelf talkers, table tents, employee nametags, displays of unique local items, have in-store demonstrations of local products.

• Create displays of local items.

• Offer a special sale or host a tasting or demo of a local product.

• Use Think Local First materials.

            - Post the new posters (to arrive late Nov)

            - Purchase buttons or t-shrits for yourself and employees

            - Print up a BLW banner or bag stuffers (PDF files available, just ask)

            - Purchase Local First gift tags to give to customers or bumper stickers to resell (ask about wholesale pricing).

            - Consider the Coupon Book as a customer give away (ask about bulk pricing).

Contact Michelle Grandy at mgrandy@sconnect.org, for the logo or PDF files of the banner or bag stuffers or with questions.