Shop Rome First

ues, and appreciate their efforts to raise visibility and awareness of what Rome has to offer. Shopping locally helps support independent business owners, keep sales tax dollars in our community, and keep property taxes down. While there are many benefits to membership in the Rome Chamber, we appreciate our responsibility to encourage everyone to Shop Rome…First. We encourage Rome Chamber members, area businesses, and customers to use online tools available to help us remind each other to Shop Rome First, all through the year. For a current listing of Rome Chamber members, including service and retail businesses, please visit http://www.romechamber.com/list/ and search through for your specific category of interest. BACKGROUND
Many chambers of commerce do not take a leading role in mobilizing specific groups of businesses for promotion purposes; they focus, instead, on encouraging people to adopt a generic mind-set to “shop local”. In 2001, with poll results by Zogby International, commissioned by the Rome Chamber, indicating that 75% of Rome residents looked first to stores outside Rome, NY, Chamber retail members initiated the Shop Rome First campaign. At that time, there was no national campaign for shopping local. There were no “shop local” grassroots movements via social media outlets. The Rome Chamber was years ahead of the curve, and successfully helped increase and stabilize local sales tax revenue for the City of Rome in each December with its Shop Rome First Holiday campaign. The program has evolved over the years in response to an annual survey of participants, and in 2015, City of Rome Sales tax revenue in December was more than $300,000 higher than it was in 2002.