Ritchie Community League

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Ritchie small business boosts counterparts across Western Canada

Communications - Ritchie Community League

liftinteractive, based in West Ritchie for the past five of its 18 years in the website and marketing business, was feeling the economic squeeze as its clients’ funds for self-promotion evaporated in mid-March. Almost overnight, it had to decide if it could keep its own 32-person team busy. 

An emergency brainstorming session led one week later to thingsthatareopen.com, a website cataloguing small businesses that are adapting to doing business under increasing public health restrictions. They are listed by category and highlight service options: Online, Pickup, Delivery. 

“Many of our clients were still open, but they weren’t able to get the word out. We aggregated their information and built the site, repurposing some code we had from other projects,” said Thorren Koopman, strategy director. “This way they don’t have to spend money, but they still get traffic.”

Over the first weekend, 600 Edmonton businesses had signed on and 7,000 visitors were checking it out each day. A week after launch it had added listings for seven more cities in Western Canada.

liftinteractive is doing what it does best: making a business-focussed website and launching it with a full marketing plan to reach beyond lifts’ own client-base and attract customers to all the business that sign up. 

Companies interested in being listed can apply on the site. There is no cost to be listed. Those costs are borne by the site’s sponsors, liftinteractive as well as the Jim Pattison Broadcasting Group, Barricades and Signs, along with the City of Edmonton and local radio stations.

There are 291 business in Ritchie. Among those that remain open, some have found their way to thingsthatareopen.com while other have not. Here’s a small sample of what’s open in Ritchie: