(l-r) DBI Executive Director Talisha Coppock and oak owner Talia Halliday are working to develop more creative partnerships among Bloomington retailers and restaurants. Photo by Martin Boling
By Barb Berggoetz
Talia Halliday operates Café Thistle in her downtown plant store, oak, selling baked goods from nearby Brightside Café. Halliday also owns Gather on the downtown Square, which sells pottery from the Pottery House Studio that customers decorate and Pottery House fires in its kiln.
Collaborations like these with businesses and artists have been a long-time practice for Halliday. “That’s always been the mission of everything I do,” she says. “It’s a no-brainer.”
Now, Halliday has partnered with Downtown Bloomington Inc. (DBI) to develop even more creative partnerships among Bloomington retailers and restaurants as part of a five-year action plan promoting downtown.
“Now that COVID is behind us and we have some new businesses downtown, we’re looking for ways to promote those new businesses, as well as established businesses,” says Talisha Coppock, DBI executive director. “One of the initiatives is helping coordinate individual retailers together to promote different business clusters.”
She explains how events and attractions could bring together retailers involved in cooking, outdoor adventures, health and wellness, reading, fashion, restaurants, arts-related businesses, and galleries. Some ideas are to create a “coffee trail” event to encourage more retailers to sell products from other shops in their own, Coppock adds.
“It’s a good way to have a more cohesive and unified effort to better connect the dots between local destinations, seasonal activities, and downtown promotions,” she says, adding that these types of strategies can elevate downtown, provide the public more information about retailers, and help strengthen small shops that create a unique local flavor.
A long-time popular collaboration she cited is the Downtown Bloomington Trick or Treat Walk, which engages 60 downtown businesses and churches. “It’s very strong and shows how businesses can work together and create a promotion,” she says.
For Halliday, who created the Halloween event, downtown and local businesses would benefit from more collaboration. Her artist-run handmade-gift store, Gather, started as a collaboration with 15 local artists. It now sells the independent work of some 300 Midwest artists and crafters.
But she understands why some business owners don’t do this yet. “It’s really hard, and it’s very insular when you run your own business. You have to find the perfect partnership. You have to be able to see the big picture, which is difficult.”
