Live local: shop local – your euro are vital to Mullingar
Mullingar Chamber has a Live Local, Shop Local campaign on the go and it is not only about capturing the feelgood factor of supporting your family, friends and neighbours in their business endeavours.
It is also about the profound economic impact that keeping money in Mullingar will have and how the fate of the entire town depends on it.
“Money is like blood, being pumped around by the heart,” said Pat Whelan, president of Mullingar Chamber of Commerce at the launch of the 2013 shopping vouchers last week.
“It needs to keep flowing through and around to keep the economy going. If it goes to online retail, or the huge retail outlets in other areas, then it flows out, like blood pumping from a wound – lost from our town and no longer circulating. Lose enough blood and even the strongest heart has nothing to pump. Lose enough money and the entire town will struggle.
“This is becoming a matter of resilience: when you spend your money online you are not creating employment in Mullingar,” Mr Whelan added.
“When you’re buying local the shop you buy from is putting that money into its input costs, supplies, upkeep, printing, paying employees – which puts that money right back in the community.”
“One way to keep money in the community and stop it leaking away is the Mullingar Chamber Shopping Voucher. Last year it kept €80,000 in the Mullingar economy.
“This year we would hope once more employers will consider the vouchers as the most tax efficient way of paying a Christmas bonus and that people committed to the community would consider buying the voucher and keeping money circulating in the community, for Christmas and for every day after that,” says Mr Whelan.
The Mullingar Chamber Shopping Vouchers are available from Mullingar Credit Union, Annebrook House Hotel and the chamber office.
More than 60 retailers in Mullingar and the surrounding area accept the vouchers.
A full list is available from Mullingar Chamber of Commerce and is on its website, mullingarchamber.ie.
The chamber has also planned lots of Christmas activity in the town centre on Saturday afternoons this month, including Christmas market stalls and carol singers.
On Saturdays December, 14 and 21, Market Square will be filled with the sights and sounds of Christmas, with an old fashioned market and carolers. Saturday December 7 will feature Mullingar Town Band and already confirmed are carol singers from Educate Together and St Brigid’s School.
The following Saturday will include choirs from Presentation, CBS, St Colman’s and Multyfarnham and on the final Saturday the amazing St Finian’s School Choir and the Town Band will perform.