The new Home Improvement Alliance is up and running; their first meeting was September 14 at Fox Sports Grill in the Palisades Center Mall and another is planned for 6pm on October 17 at Casa Mia Restaurant.
Co-chairs Richard Franco of Closet Concepts and Patricia Murphy of Advantage Alarms are hoping to use the alliance to create a solid networking and marketing core for members. They see progress being made.
"Everyone is still getting to know each other but it is going very well," Murphy said. Eleven businesses showed up at the first meeting and she expects that number to increase.
Franco said that a challenge facing businesses in Rockland is the price of advertising. As such, joint-marketing is a major item on the alliance agenda. There has been talk of using the RBA website as a catalog for member businesses and placing joint-ads that refer people to the alliance's webpage. One publication that has caught the interest of the alliance is the Journal News' Rockland Home magazine.
Another idea members had was to publish a joint flier. And another is a free seminar for the public in the mall where people can come in and ask questions of the various contractors. Someone with marketing expertise will be the guest speaker at the next meeting, Franco said.
Franco and Lou Silver presented profiles of their businesses at the meeting. Franco runs Closet Concepts and Lou Silver owns two businesses, Silver Roofing and Nyack Fabrics. At every meeting at least one business will have the chance to present a profile thereby giving the group a chance to get to know them.
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