Merchant Growth Club a Tool for Downtown

The Merchant Growth Club emerged in February 2010, as a way for, a non-profit dedicated to developing Libertyville's downtown, to provide resources for its members. Now in its second year, participants are using it to educate themselves and help their businesses thrive.

“We’ve done seminars on sales and marketing, building the team you’ve always dreamed of, and building your business from the ground up,” said Casey Karl, a co-founder and former MainStreet Libertyville Chairman.

Karl, now in charge of social media for MainStreet Libertyville, says the idea came from discussions with Executive Director Pam Hume regarding the non-profit’s role as an educator to its members. Karl reached out to Libertyville based Business Coach Dave Verbeten, and together, they started the Merchant Growth Club.

“Most of this comes from Dave’s philosophies” Karl said. “We realized we could distill this down to relevant topics to Main Street merchants and in a format that we can do in a pretty friendly piece of time.”

Karl says the programs were offered once every other month for the first year, but are now being held once a month and attendance is growing. Their most recent program discussed social media.

“With the advent of social media and social networking, everybody’s got a different level of understanding,” said John Timony, owner of and MainStreet Libertyville board member. “Because it’s so new, it’s hard to go to the library or online to find the information you’re looking for. You can find books on just Facebook or Twitter, but the details are actually better when you have these open forums.”

At the social media event, Karl and Verbeten used an open forum structure, and participants say the input from other merchants made the material even more relevant.

“There was a lot of learning going on in that format,” Timony said. “People realized that although their business may be unique, the application of social media may be very similar to someone else’s. It’s an evolving subject, which is why I think there was more of a roundtable discussion than in some of their prior seminars.”

Timony also credits the Merchant Growth Club with the reminder to go back and do the basics.

“Everybody writes a business plan, but how many people go back and reexamine it and rewrite it,” Timony said. “It reminds you to break away from the daily grind.”

owner Kristin Dean also attended the social media event as well as most of the other seminars. Dean says she likes that the seminars show that MainStreet Libertyville is there to support them.

“All of the meetings have been extremely positive,” Dean said. “We’re in a down economy, and they are always positive. Not positive to the point where they’re standing up there as cheerleaders, but to make us more confident.”

Dean says she’s taken a lot away from the discussions, creating a business tagline and formulating ideas on how to make her business unique. She also admits it’s just nice to go and feel like you’re part of a team.

“Everyone’s in the same boat as you and they’re talking you’re same language,” she said.

The next Merchant Growth Club will discuss Dashboards - Measuring Your Businesses, featuring Dave Verbeten.

The event will be held at Cook Memorial Library meeting room at 4 p.m. on May 17.

For more information, visit: www.mainstreetlibertyville.orginfo@mainstreetlibertyville.org