Local Biz Collective
The final presentation of my thesis project for my MFA in Interaction Design at the School of Visual arts. Presented during the Shift Thesis Festival Class of 2019.
I want you to take a second to think about your favorite local business, it could be a coffee shop, a restaurant, any place that brings you joy.
This is Cornelia Street Cafe, one of my favorite local businesses in my neighborhood.
Problem
Sadly it closed in January after being in business for 42 years.
I moved to New York City from Brazil about 12 years ago. Since then I have lived in several neighborhoods. This experience has made me fall in love with each of these neighborhoods because they are filled with unique locally owned businesses.
Businesses that the owner knows your name and how you like your coffee are why I love New York City, not because there is a Starbucks on every corner, but because of these charming places that we can’t find anywhere else.
Unfortunately, Cornelia Street Cafe is not the only business that has closed recently:
“Every month, 1000–1200 New York City small businesses are forced to close their doors.” – Take Back NYC
And many of the businesses that are still open are barely making ends meet.
Persona
Like, Juan the owner of a small Mexican restaurant in the West Village.
He has very low-profit margins because of his high rent. He wishes he could reach more customers, but he doesn’t have enough time and revenue to spend on new marketing strategies. To save cost he has to wear many hats to run his restaurant, and sometimes he feels lonely by doing everything by himself. He doesn’t have someone he can share his challenges and from whom he can get feedback.
Solution
To help business owners like Juan, I created Local Biz Collective, a supportive network that helps small business owners build an alliance in their neighborhood.
This service has two offerings: a toolkit and a website.
The toolkit offers a framework of three workshops with engaging activities that help business owners solve their biggest challenges together.
The three workshops guide business owners on how to implement one idea. Besides, participants can choose when and how often they would like to meet.
The website helps business owners to connect by joining or starting a group near them, they can schedule workshops and invite people, and download the toolkit.
User scenario
This is how Local Biz Collective can help Juan.
The website helps Juan find a new group near him, or if there isn’t one, he can start a new group.
As the organizer of the group Juan schedules the first workshop. Local Biz Collective makes the process of inviting people to join seamless, all he has to do is post the event on our website.
He has the option to generate a pdf of the invitation and print it out to invite people in person.
After Juan finds his group and books the first session, he gets the toolkit to prepare for the workshops.
Each workshop is designed to last 1 hour because small business owners don’t have time to spare. The toolkit advises Juan to stay on track by timing the activities. It also reminds him of what to bring to be prepared.
The purpose of the first workshop is for participants to get you to know each other, share challenges and brainstorm ideas together.
The worksheet has prompts that help guide the activities, it tells participants how long each activity is, and it advises them to use the cards that help spark the discussion.
The challenge cards are designed to make participants realize that they are not alone, that other small business owners struggles are not far from their own. The idea cards, help participants to get inspired by ideas that other groups from our network have implemented.
During the first session, Juan realizes that all of them share the same problem.
They choose one idea to work on at their next meeting.
During the second workshop, Juan and his group brainstorm how their idea would work and what steps they need to take to implement it.
The worksheet asks them questions that make them understand the root of their issue so they can design a feasible solution.
Moreover, it helps them hold each other accountable by directing them to assign tasks to each other.
Juan’s group continues to meet using the follow-up meeting framework.to meet using the follow-up meeting framework.
The worksheet guides them to review their tasks. Participants can continue using this framework until they accomplish their shared goal, it helps them to stay focused and be productive.
After four meetings, Juan’s group executes their idea. They created a coupon discount card that was distributed at local corporate offices. It resulted in a 10% increase in sales.
Juan is feeling proud and happy about his group’s accomplishment and decides he wants to give back to the community that helped him.
So he goes back to the Local Biz Collective website to publish his group’s idea.
And it becomes part of the idea cards set. Now other groups can get inspired by what they have done.
Prototype
To date, Local Biz Collective has been piloted with a group of business owners in the Lower East Side and the West Village.
Conclusion
It was created to empower small business owners to learn from each other, improve their business together, and build a strong neighborhood community.
Juan’s group is an example of how business owners can benefit from working together. I hope this initiative inspires business owners to continue using this framework to build more supportive communities in our city.
Besides, I can see this project being scaled to help public servants and advocates to address other problems that could help to save our favorite small businesses.
