Shop Small Saturday
Smyrna Business Association and Osborne High Collaboration

Students from Osborne High School’s FBLA club and Marketing class recently collaborated with Smyrna Business Association (SBA) to promote Shop Smyrna Saturday. Shop Small Business Saturday follows Black Friday each year and is a way of celebrating and promoting small businesses in the local community. Shoppers are encouraged to visit their local, independently owned businesses. SBA sponsors this event for small businesses in Smyrna each year. SBA leadership worked with Osborne staff and students to promote this year’s Shop Smyrna Saturday event.

Initially, SBA representative Christy Hiatt met with students virtually to outline the needs of the event. Students pressed the “Shop Smyrna Saturday” logo on 500 tote bags that were provided to those businesses that participated. Businesses provided coupons and marketing materials to be included in the tote bags. Once all bags were pressed with the logo, students stuffed the coupons and marketing materials in the bags. Students also helped with identifying local businesses to participate. This included research of Smyrna small businesses.

This collaboration provided an excellent real-world experience for the students while helping the local community. Students have a better understanding of how important small businesses are for the local economy. They also learned about the role that SBA plays in promoting and developing small businesses. SBA covered the costs of materials for the tote bags, while Osborne provided the labor as a community service project. As a thank you, SBA also donated $150 to help defray costs for an upcoming FBLA conference. This will help pay for the registration costs for five members to attend.

This collaboration isn’t the first time that Osborne and SBA have worked together. Osborne Work-Based Learning program provides students to help with the monthly SBA luncheons. Both Osborne and SBA look forward to many more opportunities to work together in the future.