Connecting business to business at the Wayne County Business Showcase
For the past 23 years, the Wooster Area Chamber of Commerce and the Orrville Area Chamber of Commerce have made it a little easier for local businesses to connect with one another and showcase the products and services they offer via a successful business-to-business expo known as the Wayne County Business Showcase.
On March 29 and 30, more than 60 local Wayne County businesses set up shop in the former StoneCraft Industries building on Cleveland Road for two days of networking with their fellow local businesses.
According to Wooster Area Chamber of Commerce President Jeff Griffin, with an exhibitor list that ran the gamut from financial institutions and caterers to employee training services providers and printers, the Wayne County Business Showcase provided businesses with a "one stop shop" for virtually every product or service a business might need.
Over the course of the two day event, local businesses networked not only with the more than 1,000 visitors who attended the event, but also with their fellow exhibitors.
Because the very nature of a business expo is to connect vendors and clients who are ready to do business, the contacts made during the event are invaluable to local businesses.
"The people who come here have a concentrated customer base and they do a lot of business here," said Griffin.
Businesses also used the event as a way to quickly and efficiently reconnect with their existing client base, something that would take months to accomplish through one-on-one client contacts.
Some of those taking part in the showcase also garnered valuable experience by taking part in the event.
According to Griffin, for many years the event organizers have partnered with Wayne County Schools Career Center to provide their students with real world experience.
Adult education students studying office technology put the lessons they learned in the classroom to work in a practical way by assisting with event registration while high school seniors from the career center's criminal justice program assisted with parking and other crowd control duties.
According to Griffin, even the location of this year's event provided the opportunity to showcase a significant area business asset – the nearly 200,000-square-foot building formerly occupied by StoneCraft.
"With the StoneCraft building being empty, we wanted to try something different and change our venue," said Griffin.
When local developer Jerry Baker offered the event organizers the opportunity to relocate the event to the StoneCraft building, they jumped at the opportunity to shine a light on the flexible manufacturing and warehousing facility.
"With the economic crisis, the StoneCraft building hasn't filled up with the manufacturing we all wanted it to," said Griffin, noting that the idea for moving the event to the StoneCraft building provided the perfect opportunity to make businesses aware that the building is available.
According to Griffin, the move had the intended effect.
"I've heard a lot of people say they didn't know this building was here and there is a lot of potential for this building," said Griffin.
For everyone involved in the event, at the end of the day the Wayne County Business Showcase was all about making personal connections.
"You see the apps, the Facebook, the Twitters and all those things where businesses find their space in outer space, but still, people want to shake hands and see who they are doing business with," said Griffin.
"I still believe that you're going to do business with people you trust," said Griffin. "I don't think that will ever go away. I really don't."
Published: April 5, 2011
