GROW Time!
Our team at young & free press loves to collaborate with community partners on fun, innovative projects. What’s next? Well, we are excited to help establish new ‘pop-up shops’ around southwestern Ontario, beginning with the first site in our home-base of St. Thomas!
The shops will operate under the brand GROW. In St. Thomas, the location will be at 378 Talbot Street downtown, and is based on a great partnership between the St. Thomas / Elgin Regional Campus of Fanshawe College, the Elgin – St. Thomas Small Business Enterprise Centre, and our team at young & free press … with the support of a generous local donor!
We all want to see our community grow, and that’s exactly what the shop will help us to do. The mission of the GROW pop-up shops will be to provide student entrepreneurs and start-up businesses the opportunity to introduce new ideas, products, and services to local markets in order to gather feedback, build an audience, and ultimately diversify our local economy.
How will the pop-up shops work? Essentially, the shops are just small open spaces, and there are no set, regular hours – instead, we will promote every new entrepreneur in the space as a special event that we will announce and highlight through our social media channels! Some may wish to ‘pop-up’ in the space for a day or two, while others may like to utilize the space for up to a week. This is a great way to access a new market, gain visibility, and meet potential customers, too.
We welcome inquiries from artists, clothing designers, food companies, artisanal welders, tour companies, and the list goes on … just let us know how you would like to use the space! For students out there, we definitely want to showcase your ideas and start-up plans.
If you are interested in setting up in our space to ‘grow’, contact Sarah Noble at the Small Business Enterprise Centre at snoble@st-thomasedc.on.ca, or Andrew Gunn at young & free press at andrew@youngandfreepress.ca … we look forward to hearing from you soon!
Maddie King and Jenn Klassen of young & free press look into the 'grow' pop-up shop location at 378 Talbot Street in downtown St. Thomas. Look for new signs on the building soon and make sure to visit the space when we get everything rolling! In the photo at the top of the article, Maddie and Jenn are joined by Sarah Noble and Tara McCaulley of the Elgin / St. Thomas Small Business Enterprise Centre, and Ross Fair of Fanshawe College, St. Thomas / Elgin Regional Campus.
