Archive News from Digital Main Street

Nancy Lanouette spent thirty years as a project manager at a major telecommunications company before moving to Perth and opening Where Dragons Fly, an essential oils and supply shop for DIY health, beauty and home care. She’d loved her career and chasing her passion surrounding DIY was the perfect comedown from the high intensity and demanding business she’d worked in. But it also wasn’t the end of her relationship with the world of IT.

In the holistic health and wellness space where trust forms the backbone of every interaction, being an expert in the field isn’t enough. Clients want to know you, they want to know your philosophy and where your values lie.

Sagrario Castilla has been teaching Pilates for nearly 30 years. And for the better part of three decades, she’s thrived on simple systems and word of mouth. It’s served her well and made Sagrario Pilates Studio a mainstay in Toronto’s Church Wellesley Village long before all the fitness trends of the day started carving out their own niches in the city’s four corners.

In the age of fast fashion and e-commerce Lien Vu’s T-Elle Boutique is a rarity. For 35 years, Vu’s quietly filled the racks of her women’s clothing shop in downtown Peterborough with season after season of designer fashion for women, a curated collection of high-end clothing that wouldn’t be out of place in her own closet.

For Lisa Kuypers-Schroedter bringing Digital Main Street to Trenton’s Downtown BIA seemed like an easy sell. The program aims to help main street businesses strengthen their online capabilities. After hearing about it and sitting in on a few talks, she figured it was time to export the concept to Trenton and neighbouring Brighton.

Three or four times a year, Donna Stewart, owner of Bruce Peninsula Boat Tours, sends an update called Tour News to her 700-strong email list. But the one this past fall was different, this time around she took a more candid and personal approach.

Colin Robertson and Christine Schmalz had only been living in the village of Hespeler for a little while when they heard local favourite Millpond Records and Books was closing down. So they did what any sensible couple with a growing family and careers in full swing (Schmalz in agriculture policy and Robertson as an assistant professor in the geography department at Wilfrid Laurier University) would do – they bought it.

Once a day, Sprinkles on Top tea room, bakery and ice cream parlour in Stoney Creek, plays the name game. The premise is simple: the shop posts a name on their social media and anyone with that name can come in and get a free scoop. No caveats, just a free scoop.

When you love something, you save it and Full Circle Foods, a sustainability-minded grocery store in downtown Kitchener, was much-loved. So when the old owners pinned a hand-scribbled “for sale” sign to the store’s community board, Sam Nabi and Julia Gogoleva alongside 22 community lenders did what they needed to do, they bought the nearly 40-year-old downtown staple.