Spend With Us are an award finalist for The Corporate Kindness Awards, under the category of Kindness to Community. Read on to find out the impact they have been making:
Connecting the city and the bush, Spend With Us – Buy From a Bush Business (www.spendwithus.com.au) supports rural and regional small businesses that find it hard to compete due to location, size, technology, and other adversities. We provide a central platform where every rural or regional Australian small business can create their own free website store without all the costs and technical knowledge of creating their own websites, and Australians across the country can find their products and support them without trawling numerous websites, scrolling through social media pages, or travelling hundreds of kilometres.
We provide a free, simple and user-friendly way for non-tech savvy business owners to take their businesses online, tell their inspiring stories and allow Australians to find and purchase their products all in one place easily.
In the last couple of years, many small businesses in rural Australia were forced to close their doors due to the effects of bushfires, drought, flooding and COVID-19. Businesses have lost thousands of dollars in stock, and many have had to close indefinitely. So many of these small businesses didn’t have a way to sell their products online or the time, money or technical knowledge to set something up. Creating a platform that helps remote small business owners get online easily makes our rural communities more resilient in difficult times. Rural families can diversify their income streams and learn new business skills without having to travel.
Spend With Us has three co-Founders: Sarah Britz, Jenn Donovan, and Lauren Hateley. All 3 of us are experts in our respective fields.
Sarah is an expert web designer and developer who built and manages the entire technical side of the business. She has worked in technology for over 20 years and specialises in eCommerce for small businesses.
Jenn is an expert social media and marketing strategist responsible for the marketing and advertising of the business. Jenn is an ex-conveyancer, ex-retailer, and now marketing thought leader, change-maker, social entrepreneur, coach and mentor for small businesses, keynote speaker and podcaster.
Lauren is a clinical psychologist who is trained in helping people going through trauma, and she is passionate about supporting Australian families and communities.
Together we motivate and educate each other. We all became involved with this business as we are passionate about helping rural and regional communities navigate through the impact and effects that the bushfires, drought and covid brought to the table.
Today, we have 1100+ registered Spend With Us sellers on our Marketplace website, 10,000+ products to choose from, and 335,000+ members in our Buy From a Bush Business Facebook group community.
Blog post written by Spend With Us Team. Come and support Spend With Us at The Corporate Kindness Awards and Conference. Winners to be announced at the event on Friday 1st April 2022. Get your tickets here.
Kindness to Community Category is sponsored by Blooms The Chemist.