Stephanie Palmer-Derrien* details how a campaign to encourage city people to Buy From the Bush is still having an impact nine months on.
The Buy From the Bush campaign, first launched to support business in drought-stricken regional Australia, has delivered $5 million in revenues to small and medium businesses.
A bushfire crisis and a pandemic later, those business owners are still feeling the positive effects.
The Facebook and Instagram campaigns, launched by Grace Brennan last year, encouraged city people to support, and purchase from, rural and regional businesses.
The campaigns gained instant traction. The Instagram account gained more than 50,000 followers in its first nine days.
Now, a report commissioned by Buy From The Bush and Facebook has quantified the effect the campaign had on the 275 regional businesses.
The campaign brought in $5 million in total revenue for featured small businesses. On average, those featured saw a boost of 300 per cent in revenue.
Lucy Moss (pictured) is the founder of Mink and Me, a homewares, gifts and clothing retailer with a coffee shop attached, based in Coonamble, NSW.
Being featured on the Buy From the Bush platform offered a massive boost to business, she says.
Mink and Me featured in October, and the exposure allowed the business to grow throughout the Christmas period and beyond.
She’s still feeling the positive effects today, even as new crises wreak havoc on the small business landscape.
“Buy From the Bush, has basically saved us,” Ms Moss says.
The report also found one-in-five featured businesses were able to hire new employees, and 38 per cent started shipping interstate for the first time.
Also, 19 per cent started shipping internationally.
The majority of the businesses — 80 per cent — were based in NSW and were largely located in areas worst affected by the droughts.
About 15 per cent were in Queensland, three per cent in Victoria and two per cent in South Australia.
Business owners also reported improved wellbeing, with 90 per cent saying the campaign has generally improved their quality of life.
As a result of the revenue boost, 54 per cent increased spending on discretionary goods and services, while 45 per cent reported learning a new skill, and 48 per cent said they spent more time with family.
Some also chose to give back to their communities, with 23 per cent signing up for community organisations, and 21 per cent volunteering.
The report takes into account data from October 2019 to February.
Of course, since then, the COVID-19 pandemic and related travel restrictions have caused even more trouble for rural and regional business.
“We needed that like a hole in the head,” Ms Moss says.
“It definitely did take the spotlight away from the drought, which is fair enough — it’s a global issue rather than just a localised one.”
However, she still stresses the importance of consumers in cities and metropolitan areas continuing to support regional business.
Mink and Me closed its doors for nine weeks, and traded entirely online.
“A lot of the orders weren’t local. That definitely picked up the slack,” she says.
She believes consumers are undergoing something of a mindset shift, with more demand for Australia-made products, and more of a focus on where products are coming from.
“They’re looking at it from a different perspective now, coming out of this crisis,” Ms Moss says.
*Stephanie Palmer-Derrien is the editor at StartupSmart. You can contact her at [email protected].
A fuller version of this article appeared on the Smart Company website.
