Louisville Buy Local Fair serves as a reminder that small businesses are the backbone of the community.
The Louisville Independent Business Alliance has been around since 2005 and has done wonders for local businesses in the city of Louisville. To get more information on the organization and its mission, I sat down with the director of LIBA, Jennifer Rubenstein.
How was LIBA started?
The beginning of the Louisville Independent Business Alliance is a story of a community coming together. In 2005, Borders bookstore bought out a local bookstore named Hawley-Cooke. This sent a shockwave throughout the community.
“If we could lose Hawley-Cooke, then anything could go the way of the big box stores,” as Rubenstein put it.
That was the trend during that time. Big brand stores such as Walmart, and Home Depot were coming into markets and pushing out smaller businesses in the area. At the time, the owner of Ear X-Tacy, John Timmons, traveled to Austin for a conference. While he was there, he learned about their community’s efforts to preserve their local businesses, and they convinced him to bring home the slogan that I’m sure everyone in Louisville has heard before- Keep Louisville Weird.
“He, out of his own pocket, put up a billboard across the street from his own store that said ‘Keep Louisville Weird’, and it grabbed a lot of people’s attention” said Rubenstein, “they were like, ‘what in the world, what does it mean? I don’t understand, who put this up? Why is it there?”
Obviously, this created a lot of buzz throughout the community because people had never heard of this slogan before. Once they found out what it meant, support flooded in.
“The meaning behind it was to support the businesses that contribute to the community character, that gives Louisville its sense of place, that sort of thing… it was right around the time that Hawley-Cooke closed, so it just seemed to strike a chord with a lot of people, businesses were asking him how they could be a part of this.”
The support for the idea was so strong, that Timmons’ idea of simply putting up a billboard grew to become the Louisville Independent Business Alliance, which is now in its nineteenth year of existence.
What is LIBA’s Mission?
LIBA’s has one clear goal in mind- promoting local businesses as much as they can, so that the uniqueness of Louisville is preserved. They do that by promoting member businesses to elevate their exposure and marketing, informing citizens of the values of shopping locally in the community, and by creating strong relationships with local government and media. One of the more important things that Rubenstein touched on was a study of Louisville-area businesses.
“When you spend $100 at a local business, 55 of those will stay recirculating locally. Whereas you spend it at a chain, it is around $14.” For more information on their mission, click here.
What is the Buy Local Fair, and what is its goal?
The Buy Local Fair is LIBA’s annual fair that they hold every summer. The fair presents an opportunity for the organization to show off why buying locally is important to the community, and it gives the people of the community an opportunity to spend their dollars towards the locally owned businesses.
“Part of it is about educating the public, about why buying local is important, and reminding them about why it is important. And at the same time we have this awesome event where they can come spend their dollars at the locals. So, it furthers our mission and it is our biggest fundraiser of the year as well,” Rubenstein said.
She also discussed how the fair has grown since its first one in 2008.
The first Buy Local Fair was a joint effort between LIBA, LVA (Louisville Visual Art), and the Grasshoppers, who are no longer around.
“The first one, in partnership with Louisville visual art, and the Grasshoppers… it was in the fall and at the time LVA was at the water tower, that is where their office space was. It was indoors, it probably had twenty to twenty-five vendors.”
The fair started to grow each year, and eventually, LVA decided it was outside of their mission, so LIBA kept it going.
“It started to grow, eventually LIBA became the sole partner, the sole owner of it… we generally have over one hundred booths there. We usually have attendance between three to six thousand, although we estimated eight thousand one year.”
The Buy Local fair continues to grow each and every year as the mission of LIBA grows stronger and stronger.
If you’re looking for a way to support the mission, The Louisville Independent Alliance will hold its 16th annual Buy Local Fair this upcoming Saturday. The fair will be held from 11 am to 5 pm at the home of Louisville’s two professional soccer teams, Lynn Family Stadium.
For more information on LIBA, you can visit their website here.
