It was a busy weekend for Stacey Poss and Colleen Foster at the Humboldt and District Chamber of Commerce Fall Business Expo.
Around 1,600 people came through the doors to check out around 78 vendors who came out to show off what they have.
From the kids zone, to food, to electronics, to local organizations, there was something for everyone, says Poss.
“Ultimately, what we want is something for everybody but it’s our opportunity as the Chamber of Commerce to highlight our new commercial businesses or anybody who has something going on.”
The Expo had a new look this year with one path through the Elgar Petersen Arena ice surface.
People liked the new layout, says Poss, with plenty of positive feedback from both visitors and vendors.
“The people that were coming through were interacting and I think that’s because of the layout. Everyone had to go by each booth and at that point it was up to the vendor to get their attention.”
Poss says they already have businesses wanting to book space for next year.
The chamber is open to feedback and are currently going through the evaluations from the vendors. Obviously with this being the first year of the new layout, there is going to be things to adjust.
“It will be similar. Just moving some stuff around based on the feedback we got,” says Poss.
Food vendors from local restaurants were a new addition that they will be keeping since everyone liked how food was being served at the event.
With new possibilities comes finding a balance between what works and what they should be working on.
Poss says this is the only tradeshow that professional businesses will attend so that has to remain the focus going forward.
They have also been asked to have a business focused tradeshow where business aide is the focus, again it is a matter of deciding what to keep by way of homebased and retail business.
“We want to be unique. We don’t want to be another homebased show...we will have the home piece to it for sure, again it’s a mix of everybody.”
For future years, Poss says the chamber wants to encourage other organizations around Humboldt to have events on the same weekend.
Thanks to the Humboldt Collegiate Institute Mohawk Senior Boys volleyball tournament, that brought a lot of people into town who would not have otherwise have been there, says Poss.
“It brought a lot of people into the community and into our tradeshow as well.”
