Financial Grants Awarded by the Alexandria Marketing Fund, Virginia Commission for the Arts, and Virginia Tourism Corporation
The Torpedo Factory Art Center is working to launch a new city-wide brand and promotional campaign called Handcrafted Alexandria which joins the resources of 13 art and retail businesses to pack a bigger promotional punch than any of these businesses could alone. With additional financial backing from the Alexandria Marketing Fund, the campaign will include advertisements, a website, email and direct mailings, social media presence, a reusable shopping bag, special shopping events, and more.
Scheduled for a launch in April of 2010, the Handcrafted Alexandria campaign will raise awareness of the large concentration of art, craft supply and classes, and specialty culinary businesses in Alexandria. Both visitors to and residents of the greater Washington, DC, area will learn that they can come to one area for a wide variety of creative businesses.
The campaign partners are the Torpedo Factory Art Center, fibre space ™, La Muse, the Potomac Bead Company, Ten Thousand Villages, Artcraft, Arts Afire Glass Gallery, The Art League Gallery and School, Carafe Winemakers, Del Ray Artisans, Gossypia, Imagine Artwear, Knit Happens, and Oerth Gallery.
The financial contributions of the partners received a 1:1 match from the Alexandria Marketing Fund when the Torpedo Factory Art Center presented the campaign proposal to the City in September 2009. The amount awarded by the city was $13,000. An additional $5,000 was awarded to the group following The Art League’s application for the Tourism and the Arts Grant which is sponsored by the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the Virginia Tourism Corporation.
CAMPAIGN ORIGINS
In 2009, Torpedo Factory Artists’ Association Board President Rosemary Covey began putting out feelers to local businesses about partnership opportunities. She found a great deal of interest in the community, particularly from Amanda Lasker, owner of Gossypia. They discussed the possibility of partnering for events and an idea for a reusable shopping bag that would be sold at partner businesses. Working with Torpedo Factory Director of Communications Claire Mouledoux, the idea evolved into a more comprehensive campaign idea that would use a Handcrafted theme.
Word of the partnership opportunity quickly got around town and Mouledoux was urged to contact fibre space owner Danielle Romanetti about the idea. “When I spoke with Danielle, I learned that, as part of her business plan, she had conceived of the same partnership idea with the same Handcrafted name! Clearly this campaign was going to happen one way or another. It was meant to. It embodies a major component of what Alexandria has to offer,” says Mouledoux, who has moved to a new job but will remain project manager for Handcrafted through mid-March.
Mouledoux cites the successful Old Town Boutique District campaign as a role model for the Handcrafted group. The Old Town Boutique District, now in its third year, also received matching funds from the Alexandria Marketing Fund and features participating boutique-style businesses in an ongoing promotional campaign.
“Alexandria has a great reputation for historic ambiance, fantastic restaurants, and now boutique shopping,” says Mouledoux. “With Handcrafted Alexandria, we will be highlighting the significant art and craft component of this City and hope to differentiate Alexandria as the best location in the area to find these creative businesses. The City itself is reflective of Handcrafted – with unique character, nooks and crannies, and personal stories behind objects and structures that you see.”
ALEXANDRIA MARKETING FUND
According to the City website, the Alexandria Marketing Fund “is designed to increase revenues within the City by fostering public/private partnerships that promote Alexandria as a destination for visiting, shopping, dining and doing business. City Council appropriates monies for the fund on an annual basis and the Alexandria Marketing Fund Committee reviews and approves applications for funding.”
Roger Parks, chair of the Marketing Fund voting committee and owner of American Advertising Distributors of Northern Virginia, says that the Fund has been around for over 10 years but the requirements have changed in recent years. With an increased focus on business partnerships, applicants should think of the Fund as seed money to get new, creative ideas off the ground.