Celebrating the local businesses who make great food and beautiful crafts, Local Enterprise Office Waterford has created a range of supports for its clients participating in this year’s Waterford Harvest Festival which takes place throughout the city from September 4th to September 6th.
Selected, following a call for ‘expressions of interest’, ten Waterford businesses will receive a dedicated trading space within the LEO trading area on George’s street during the Harvest Festival, attend a pre-event half-day sales and customer engagement training workshop, receive inclusion in the LEO’s digital promotion campaign, festival trading preparation and peer networking with other participating businesses.
As part of the training & preparation all ten selected local participants from the food and craft industries will attend a half-day training session with Emer Ferran, a seasoned mentor and advocate for artists’ professional development, covering pricing, merchandising, customer engagement, stand preparation and stock planning.
Jacqui Gaule, Acting Head of Enterprise with Local Enterprise Office Waterford is delighted to support these key events. “The Local Enterprise Office’s mandate is to support local small and medium sized businesses here in Waterford. This is a perfect opportunity to do just that.”
The LEO clients will be provided with a trading opportunity in a high-footfall location on George’s street, Waterford, offering direct access to festival audiences over three days. This initiative aims to support small businesses to increase visibility, develop sales capability, and test their products in a live retail environment.
Local Enterprise Waterford is also delighted to host an outdoor broadcast with WLR fm live from the centre of the city at lunchtime on Friday September 4th. This is a great opportunity to give some of its clients valuable airtime, and outline the LEO’s plans for the rest of the year.
Jacqui continued, “Waterford is renowned for its hard-working, talented and passionate producers. Waterford Harvest Festival is a fantastic platform for these creative and dedicated food and craft producers to showcase the very best of what they do. The George’s street market will give traders a great opportunity to be front and centre at the Harvest Festival.
“Broadcasting live to the county via WLR fm give us, the Local Enterprise Office, an opportunity to outline how we help and support small and medium sized enterprises in our wonderful county. We’ve a very busy Autumn, with the National Women’s Enterprise Day; the Glas awards; Best of Waterford, with WLR; not to mention our training days, grants and other events.”
If your business in pre-start, start-up or established business phase and would like to find out more about what business support services are available from LEO Waterford visit www.localenterprise.ie/Waterford/
