Hometown Help!

Most of you may not know, but our website originally started as www.ourhometowndirectory.com. We wanted to have one place where the town could come and find information on local businesses, events, and maybe win a prize or two. We were also the first in the area to offer a shop local discount card. Our card was called "The Hometown Savings Card." The card was free and all you had to do was present it to a participating merchants to receive their discount. We thought we were on to something big! We just knew we were going to be helping so many businesses and saving our hometown tons of money. Well, that's not quite how it worked out. We went out and spoke to the local businesses, we offered a listing on our website for just $200 a year. Still we couldn't talk many into joining. Thank goodness some local businesses signed up. We are very lucky to have so many friends in town. The locals seemed to really like the card and we received e-mail after e-mail asking us to add more businesses. How do we tell people their local businesses don't want to participate? We event went to the local restaurants and offered them free space.....still no.

I understand times are hard and many businesses just don't have another penny to spend. So we took our idea to the local Economic Development Committee. We showed them how they could use our program to help the local businesses and restore confidence in local shopping. Some on the committee liked the idea. We were told they had to put the idea out to bid to make it legal. Not to worry, we were the only company in Oviedo with a website that offered a shop local program. We waited, and waited, no telephone call telling us we got the bid. No e-mail thanking us for our great idea. Nothing. I made some telephone calls and found out the city awarded the bid to another company! Can you believe that? This company has a website with scanned in business cards. They don't offer discounts or coupons and they certainly didn't have a shop local card. We were baffled!

So the Oviedo Chicks were born! We still have a true desire to help our hometown. We love the people here. The businesses may not want to support us, but the locals sure do! We are so thankful to the businesses that have offered their support. We sure hope anyone visiting our site will also show them support! Please use the coupons on our site as much as you can!

If you don't see a business on our site, it's not because they were not offered the chance! We are still hoping that the local businesses will catch on and decide to list their business on our site. We really can offer them so much. We can list their business, coupons and do personal commercials for them! What more could they ask for?

We really do need your help. Please help us encourage local businesses to sign up. We want to be able to continue this website for a long time.