E-Aus supports small business & local communities

Maleny is standing up to Woolies – E-Aus encourages communities to follow suit

Jeanette and 11 year old daughter Zoe live in Upwey, in outer Melbourne’s Dandenong Ranges. She loves the sound of animals around at night, possums thumping across the roof and she also loves shopping locally, taking advantage of individual advice from ‘experts’ in their field. Jeanette encourages Zoe to think about shopping in the local strip at Tecoma rather than ‘automatically’ drifting further down the road to the large shopping centres at Belgrave or Knox.

Jeanette is in business; she has two websites and she carries her philosophy of living, caring and thinking ‘local’ into her business.

1. Through her website www.pcsimplicity.biz Jeanette sells her own, cheap – $10.00 – self-paced computer e-manuals and CDs for individuals, schools, other organisations:

• MS Windows
• MS Word
• MS Excel
• MS Access
• MS Powerpoint
• MS Publisher
• MS Outlook
• MS Frontpage
• MS Outlook Express MS Internet Explorer
• Dreamweaver
• Flash
• MYOB

Income from this business ‘keeps’ Jeanette and Zoe while she ‘grows’ her passion, www.eaus.com.au, a marketing too for small business.

2. What is E-Aus?
Concerned at the way small, local businesses are being ‘squeezed out’ by big shopping complexes and supermarkets and can’t afford much in the way of promotion to compete, Jeanette has developed a small business discount booklet modelled on the Entertainment Book to get us thinking and shopping locally, and, supporting our local NonProfit groups selling the booklet.

The E-Aus 2 year promotional package costs $395
It consists of:

• a web page on the E-Aus site that you can update yourself;
• a listing on the growing statewide business directory with a link to your website;
• a red dot on the listing that can indicate a ‘special deal’ – up to you!;
• a green dot that indicates there is a job available;
• a blue dot that indicates the business, or fixtures/fittings, are for sale;
• a voucher in a discount booklet worth around $7,000 in savings, with 10,000 copies printed over 3 print runs;
• designing of the web page and the voucher;
• info on marketing a business on the net & getting the internet to be productive for the business;
• local distribution of the booklet in a 10km radius of the business.

How the voucher booklet works

• Voucher booklets are sold to NonProfit community groups such as school associations, charities, sporting groups etc.
• These groups sell it to their communities for $25.00 receiving an $8.00 commission.
• The booklet can be used as a fundraiser for a specific purpose, eg in Jeanette’s area the Lions Club is fundraising for a child born with a very rare disability that doesn’t fit into any government ‘help category’. E-Aus has printed 500 booklets as a fundraiser and the Lions will organise selling them for the $8.00 commission;
• Jeanette employs casuals, often from the Salvos ‘Employment Plus’, to distribute the voucher booklets over a four week period.

Although E-Aus is still in its early stages, Jeanette has plans of going national after establishing the concept in Victoria. Businesses from her local area are already asking if they can be part of the next print run.

I am reminded of organising cooperative marketing in country regions for Tourism Victoria’s glossy promotional ‘Jigsaw’ brochures – the more ads a region had the more attractive it looked. The same would apply here. The presence of a cluster of businesses from one town would encourage locals to buy the booklet, knowing they wouldn’t have to travel far and would be likely to use up all the discounts available!

Would you like it to start up in your area?