Building Stronger Communities with Totally Locally

Celebrating Totally Locally Fiver Fest

Visa is again a proud supporter of the Totally Locally Fiver Fest, a nationwide celebration of independent businesses. Together we are calling on shoppers to spend £5  extra a week where they can to support the small businesses in their communities.This year’s Fiver Fest will take place between the 12th – 26th June, where towns across the country will be coming together to host £5 special offers, showcasing the range of products sold in the area and thanking their communities for supporting the local high street.  

In October 2020, more than 120 towns in the UK took part in Fiver Fest and thousands of small businesses created £5 special offers to encourage shoppers to shop locally, and to say thank you for their support. Through Totally Locally, shops are able to share ideas, promote their community and raise awareness of Fiver Fest. And for customers, it is a reminder of the role our independent business play in the community.

It’s time to shop Totally Locally

Visa and Totally Locally are helping you to take your town online and support the independent businesses that make your local communities unique.

As part of their ‘Town Kit’ Totally Locally has created an online solution, Totally Locally Independent High Streets Online, for you to support your local high street or town, all in one place, with single payment at checkout. It’s a grass-roots initiative with a mobile-friendly platform that is helping businesses build better, and communities come together stronger.

Chris Sands

It’s more important than ever before to support independent shops and businesses, as they are the lifeblood of our towns and high streets. They are a huge contribution to the local economies of the UK and make our towns and communities unique.

By shopping locally to where we live (whether that is in bricks & mortar shops or online), we build stronger and more resilient communities. In short, shopping locally makes where we live a better place! Working with Visa has helped us build our online platform for towns and spread this message even further than before.

Chris Sands, Founder of Totally Locally

Supporting independent shops

By building individual town marketplaces online, Totally Locally and Visa are supporting independent businesses and helping local communities thrive. Local customers can visit the site for their town, see what’s in store online, pay, click and collect. It’s a simple way to support your local high street from home.

Sign up your town

You can apply to take your town or independent high street online if you get 10 or more shops to sign up. When your sign up is agreed, you can add your local business to your Totally Locally town site for just £3 per week - and the first 2 months are FREE! Your business will get its own secure, bespoke online shop and you can start engaging customers on your town’s website, news and social media feeds. There’s no contract, no sales commission (just standard online transaction fees of 1.4% + 20p per order), and you can cancel any time.

Meet the Totally Locally traders

Cag Rodwell Glass Art
Crickhowell

CAG Rodwell Glass

As her business as a glass artist involves meeting people outdoors to showcase her glass work and create a sensory experience for her customers, Totally Locally has been a great way for Carys to connect with the local community in Crickhowell during lockdown. Since the outbreak, meeting people outdoors has been almost impossible for Carys, so the new virtual shopping experience with Totally Locally is a great new way for promoting, spreading the word and ensuring that the community sticks together and supports one another. 

Carys is very optimistic about the revival of the local high street. Crickhowell is a destination Carys likes to shop locally herself, however she believes the pandemic has allowed people to become even more aware of the importance of supporting small businesses. The sense of community in Crickhowell is also very strong, everyone is welcoming and knows one another so this will definitely be a key factor to helping the local area recover after the pandemic.   As a passionate artist, Carys finds it crucial that people support businesses that do not have a physical store. Especially at the moment, Carys knows the value of continuing to build her profile and she knows this is possible in a successful town as such Crickhowell, as people are aware of the need to support the high street more.

Being part of Totally Locally has ensured that I am part of the community, a place where people know each other, support one another and where I am able to build my profile as an artist. About 4 or 5 years ago, we did the Tenner Trail and Fiver Fest with Totally Locally, we were one of the first towns to be involved and it was very successful. I don’t have a physical store, but have an online and social media presence and .shop, is another fantastic way for me to have a click and collect service and have my work recognised in Crickhowell.

Cup & Saucer
Chesterfield

Cup & Saucer

Gail Hannan, tea blender and shop owner of Cup & Saucer located in Chesterfield suburb Clay Cross. Having first started her business from home selling tea blends three years ago, Gail has transformed the business to a small shop selling locally produced goods.

Gail first signed up to Fiver Fest in October 2019 while in her previous store, having only found out about the initiative at 48 hours’ notice. Gail set off around town encouraging other business owners to take part resulting in 32 independents signing up at short notice. Having seen her first experience as a great success, Gail signed up again in February and October 2020 and is excited in anticipation of the next national Fiver Fest.

Despite the challenges of lockdown, Gail noticed positive signs even while businesses were closed as locals were increasingly choosing to shop with small independent businesses and enjoying the exceptional customer service, care and attention they were receiving. Gail is optimistic that this trend will continue in the long term and that the town will benefit from this shift in shopping habits which is vitally important for Cup & Saucer as well as other independent businesses.  

When I first heard about Totally Locally’s Fiver Fest I thought it was such a fantastic initiative and an opportunity that was too good to miss out on. Despite lockdown we’ve seen ever increasing support from local shoppers looking to take advantage of the exceptional customer service that independent businesses can provide. Fiver Fest this year gives a great opportunity for this to continue and I hope that our locals will take advantage.

Daisy B's Boutique
Daventry

Daisy B's Boutique

Daisy B’s Boutique is a retail store based in Daventry. Owned by Sarah McCrossan, the shop has benefitted from the wider community forum created by Totally Locally platform as it’s been helpful to have access to promotions and marketing materials that allow her to reach the community more widely.

Daisy B’s Boutique has been part of Totally Locally for the past two years through the Daventry Retail Forum, a team of retailers that have joined forces to share support, equipment and training, acting as a local hub of knowledge for local retailers.

Despite the recent challenges that have been faced, Sarah is a very positive about the revival of Daventry high street as she has noticed more people trying to shop locally as much as possible. 

The success of the high street in Daventry is down to the excellent customer service from local businesses and providing locals with products that can’t be found online. For Sarah, the importance of shopping locally and coming together as a community to support each other has been magnified by the pandemic and in some ways has had a positive impact as more people are spreading the word about what Daventry’s high street can offer.

Due to new customers shopping locally and supporting small businesses, Sarah has thought about diversifying the products she sells in Daisy B’s Boutique to appeal to even more shoppers. Daisy has also seen the power of social media by setting up a YouTube channel as this has really given her business a good presence online. 

Being part of the Daventry Retail Forum has allowed me to access platforms such as Totally Locally that acts like a form of corporate support and has helped us so much with the likes of marketing, time management, support and training. Shopping locally is very important for me and my businesses, whether that’s online or offline. I believe that the pandemic has allowed for more people to recognise the importance of supporting local businesses and it’s been amazing to see new faces in my shop – I am now even thinking of diversifying what I am selling due to recent popularity! For me, it’s all about customer service and the community coming together, my ethos is about ‘keeping it real’ so it’s great to know that I have that control and freedom to do this with Totally Locally.

Grain & Sustain
Burtnisland

Grain & Strain

Grain and Sustain is a zero-waste shop set up by Louise Humpington in Burntisland, stocking over 400 food, household and bathroom protects on refill, as well as hundreds of other ethically sourced and eco-friendly products. But it's not all mung beans and quinoa, with the multi award winning shop also stocking delights such as vegan pick n mix and their super popular frozen pastries on refill. Louise was inspired to set up her business in order to shine a light on human rights, climate change and environmental challenges around the world. She wanted to help shoppers in Fife make more ethical and sustainable choices, and to enable them to progress on their journey to zero waste. Through this passion for green living, Louise is keen to make an impact on the environment around Burntisland and to help support the community in preserving it. Through her work with other community groups in the area, Louise has been thrilled with the effect this has had already with green living becoming an increased priority for Burntisland residents.

During lockdown, Louise felt incredibly fortunate to have a shop in Burntisland where all the businesses support each other and work together as a community to help the town thrive. She explains that she loves helping other businesses around Burntisland make their goods and products more eco-friendly, with everything from Fairtrade coffee to candles to jam. During Totally Locally’s Fiver Fest, Louise has loved the opportunity to promote sustainable products and used the celebration as a way of introducing customers to new foods and goods they previously had not tried.

This support for sustainable local businesses has seen Louise seek out products to stock in her store, in order to showcase their eco credentials and provide an opportunity for those who otherwise would not have a shopfront. Louise explains that by having a variety of zero-waste and eco-friendly goods in store, she has been able to create a network that supports independent businesses and their suppliers from Burntisland and across the UK, as well as ultimately helping the environment too.

Burntisland is a fantastic town where the community is passionate about supporting local businesses and enthusiastic about looking after the beautiful natural environment around them. Fiver Fest has given us an incredible opportunity to introduce more customers to the zero-waste world and show how they can not only support local independent businesses but look after the environment. Thanks to the fantastic support shown by local shoppers during lockdown we’ve been able to stock more products from other businesses in Burntisland and help them continue trading even when most shops were closed. I’m incredibly proud of how businesses in Burntisland support each other and work together to make our town such a special place to live.

Tom Courts Butchers
Burntisland

Tom Courts Butchers

Tom Courts is an award-winning second-generation butcher following in his father’s footsteps. Tom has been running his shop for four years and in that time has won several awards including Scottish Haggis Champion, Sausage Roll World Champion and Britain’s Best New Butchery Business.

Tom has been involved in Totally Locally’s Fiver Fest over the past few years and is always thrilled by the new and existing customers that the celebration brings to his store. Thanks to the wide range of products they sell, Tom Courts puts a different item on offer each day, allowing people to buy a great variety of meat in large quantities but at a discounted price. Tom notes that Burntisland has always been a town where the businesses work together and support each other and that this community spirit really comes alive during Fiver Fest. Despite the challenges of lockdown, Tom has seen significant support for his business which he believes has partly come from shoppers spending more time at home and taking the opportunity to explore the high street more. He’s been pleased to see how locals have become increasingly conscious of the value of shopping with small businesses.

Tom notes that this support has enabled him to expand his business with the view of launching an online store and creating a factory down the road which he hopes will create more jobs and enable the shop to offer even better customer service. It’s this passion for supporting the community that drives Tom. When faced with the prospect of vulnerable customers being unable to visit the shop, he quickly launched a delivery service and hopes that the new online store will strengthen this service even further. Despite all the challenges this year, Tom has continued to offer his support to local charities and is always searching for a new way to support the Burntisland community in anyway he can.  

Burntisland’s businesses are fortunate to have fantastic support from the local community. Fiver Fest is always one of the best weeks of the year for us and allows us to gain new customers as well as strengthen our connection to existing ones. I’m always delighted to be able to support community initiatives and charities and give something back to the community and our loyal customers.