supportland

By Melissa

One of the big reasons Bolt exists is because people in and around our neighborhood choose to support local businesses.  Gina was showing me pictures of when she first opened-- we were laughing at how she could have held a dance party up front with all the empty space.  It didn't really matter how relatively little was in the store those first few months because people came and shopped and invested in what they needed or wanted, and more importantly for Bolt, in a local business they could get behind.  This is a story that gets repeated hundreds of times over in Portland.  People believe in small businesses and entrepreneurs believe in getting their customers the best of what's available. 

Here comes the good people at Supportland (pronounced su-PORTland) to reward local shoppers and businesses with incentives to keep everybody happy.  They are in a pre-launch phase at the moment, but you can still register for a free reward card and learn more about what they're doing to give Portlanders a pat on the back for doing what they're already good at: buying local.  Lovely.  We'll have more information on Bolt's involvement as things get rolling. 

There's some good news for those of you outside of our fair city: they're hoping to grow the business and the points infrastructure wherever small business networks exist.  Minneapolis?  Are you hearing this??