Disclaimer: We tried doing this story without editorializing, but couldn't -- so we made it into an editorial!
A website has been set up to survey local residents about the kind of businesses they would support in Altadena.
The website: surveyaltadena.com -- is a collaboration between Chamber board member Ed Meyers, business owner Lori Webster, Harlow Technologies (run by Altadena resident Dan Harlow) and New York City company AOL Patch, which has recently established one of its 500 "local" websites in Altadena. The Altadena Chamber of Commerce itself is claiming ownership of the survey, and is encouraging any and all to take it.
In an email to Altadenablog, Meyers wrote:
With the economic climate what it is, the Chamber has been thinking about what we can do to help both Chamber members and the community as a whole. We've come out with the Shop Altadena Coupon Page to incent [sic] residents to shop locally. We're thankful that 12 local businesses chose to advertise with us for November & December.
However, long term, more obviously needs to be done. It was suggested that the Chamber may want to put together a business survey to better understand what type of retail residents may like to see as well as better understand shopping habits ...
A fairly detailed online survey was put together over a 3-4 week period. To help generate interest and increase participation, there's a $150 cash prize being offered to one lucky survey taker willing to share some contact information.
The survey results will be shared with the chamber, and with county economic development bodies and other potential business partners.
Which is all well and good, and we encourage you to take the survey. However, while we'd heard such a survey was in the works, the first official word we'd heard about it from anybody was reading about it in Patch.
Now, we don't mind competing with AOL Patch -- we think we've been holding our own so far as best we can without $50 million capitalization to play with. They get some things first, we get some things first, it's all part of the business and keeps us both sharp, which is to the reader's -- your -- benefit.
And we also don't mind cooperating with AOL Patch -- we all agree the business climate in Altadena leaves a lot to be desired, and a local business survey (despite our misgivings that literally anybody in the world can take it) is a good thing to have, and an important step. We think it needs promoting, and that's what we're doing now.
However, it's quite disheartening to find out that, in the process of trying to improve the local business climate, our Chamber opted to shut out an actual local business and fellow Chamber member in favor of its out-of-town corporate competitor. (We were also one of the 12 advertisers in the last run of coupons, to add salt to the wound). Despite some later claims that Altadenablog was in the plans the whole time, the actual fact is that we only received information about the survey after we read about it in Patch and wrote a letter of protest to the Chamber board.
So yes, take the survey and let your views be known. But a Chamber that is trying to encourage customers to shop locally needs to think about doing a little of that itself.
