After the pandemic the struggle is real and we need you to support local more than ever! Hello all! I thought I would create a post introducing myself and what this page is about. Please bare with the long post but I feel I need a good explanation to keep you coming back! My name is Stacey and I am a small business owner in Llangefni. I run Emberwood Creative and Emberwood Photography. I have been
on the high street for 4 years now but recently made some changes closing the shop part of my business to now a dedicated studio. The reason I closed the shop part of my business was because it suffered greatly due to the pandemic, when I reopened people were still not confident to shop, the high street was quiet and my doors were open but no one was coming in. So I took the hard decision to close the shop and push my business harder in the creative direction, I have been lucky that over summer work that has not involved being face to face saved me. Fast forward to today and some friends of mine have closed the doors on their cafe and shop that they’ve only had open for just about a year! Unfortunately the pandemic hit them just after they had committed to refurbing an old shop and making it their own, draining them of all their savings. They pushed on and they opened to, like me, a slow and quiet high street. Unfortunately despite some loyal local punters it was not enough to keep their head above water and with the rising energy costs they have had to close their doors to keep costs down. for how long I don’t know. But this today has saddened me so much I feel something needs to be done! We need a campaign and we need to support our local stores before we become an island of ghost towns! We need you! We left this beautiful island, born and bred (myself just bred 🤣) to go off and get our degrees, fill ourselves with knowledge and expertise and returned to anglesey excited, passionate and full of ideas ready to inject into the community only to find that’s not what’s happening. Online services and retail parks and killing us off one by one! We are real people, we are self employed, a lot of people think we are rich because we are self employed but I can tell you it’s often the other way 😬 barely paying ourselves a wage because it takes the best part of 5 years to get anywhere when you open a business. Anyway this is not a sob story (mostly) -
This where you come in - I’m finally getting to the point - we need you to support us and it doesn’t have to cost you a penny! Here’s how:
Like this page, follow it, set the notifications to ‘my feed’ . Like and comment on posts - comment, sharing and tagging gets us seen - tells Facebook we are relevant to the world! That’s free! If you want to help some more - go to the business page that has posted and do the same, follow like comment! It’s free!! Wanna help even more?! Buy our goods, buy our services! We don’t bite, we still stock sanitiser, come see us! Build a relationship and a community again. Still want to help?? Then visit our websites, leave us reviews on google and Facebook and trip advisor! You’re telling the World Wide Web we are relevant and we exist! Tell your friends about us! Even the ones that live far, we can ship! It sounds patronising I know and I apologise for that, but these simple things are missed and just simply not known, not all people know how social media works! Not everyone thinks their £3 coffee that day might make the difference of whether that store is open or shut. It all matters and it all helps. So - that is my plea and that is my ask, not just for me but for everyone on anglesey so many people I know work hard. My main objective with this page is to get High street independent shops and businesses known. I just found out about an amazing cafe in rhosneigr I never knew existed? I live here! How do I not know and why hasn’t it come up? It will here - cos you’ll help us won’t you? All businesses are welcome of course - For sale groups, tourist groups, they won’t let us post our businesses, they think it’s spam - but it’s our livelihood!
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Tip of the day : Business owners rule number one - talk about your business - to everyone!!
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If you have read this far I truly applaud you 👏🏻 and mostly thank you 🙏 I have lots of plans that I really hope I can bring into fruition. I will be running this off my own back for as long as I possibly can but if it does work out like I hope I will have options to help support and raise money to keep this going. Some of my ideas are:
⭐️ Dedicated website and directory for all small and independent businesses on Anglesey
⭐️ Anglesey small business merch
⭐️ Window stickers, badges, posters and more for your stores
⭐️ sponsor options both ways
⭐️ Anglesey small business discount scheme
⭐️ Ambassador opportunities
All will be bilingual. Again, Thank you
Stacey xox
