Kimberly Elliott has been making her rounds, talking to business owners to ask what they need from the Tecumseh Chamber of Commerce.
Elliott is excited to step into her new role as the Executive Director at the Chamber where she hopes to help local businesses bring in more foot traffic from surrounding communities.
Elliott’s job began on May 31. Since then, she has been learning about all the behind-the-scenes tasks of the Chamber from out-going director Leslie Merritt, whose last official day is tomorrow (June 17). Merritt’s contract has been extended by the Chamber Board of Directors, on a “very part-time basis,” through Dec. 31, said Merritt, so that she can help Elliott with managing the Chamber’s website, https://www. tecumsehchamber.com/.
Merritt built the website “from scratch,” she said, and considers it one of her greater achievements. She was hired to build an informational website, but will leave the Chamber an interactive one, “where our members can actually sign up for different things and pay their dues, pay for registrations and events, and things like that.”
“I think it’s a real helpful tool to keep our members connected, and keep our community connected because we do have a newsletter on the website that anybody from the community can subscribe to,” said Merritt.
Merritt is also proud of the Chamber’s growth in membership and income. Their membership has grown from 51 businesses when she started on Mar. 16, 2020, to around 119 current members.
Merritt said they hit 100 members in June 2020.
“That was the first time they had seen 100 members in over a decade,” she said.
Merritt’s new job will be as a technical project manager for Skvare (pronounced “Square”), where she will evaluate the technical system solution needs of organizations and pass on the information to the development team.
In addition to helping with the website and any questions that arise, Merritt has left Elliott a binder full of instructions. She also hopes Elliott the best.
“I hope to always stay busy, and I still hope to help with the Tecumseh community,” said Merritt. “I’m just going to do it in a different light now. So, I think it’s time for Kim to take over, and it’ll be great.”
Merritt and Elliott first met when the latter worked as an office manager for Jordan Contractors, in Tecumseh. At that time, Elliott lived near Macomb, but she has since moved to Shawnee. She said she worked for Jimmy Jordan for seven years, and he became like family.
Elliott was familiar with the Chamber, since Jordan was a member, and he bought tickets to the annual Chamber Auction for her and her husband.
“I’ve been involved in some of the chamber events and things like that,” she said. “But … I’m excited to get on the other side of it.”
Elliott is also a business owner herself. She started C2 Embroidery and Vinyl out of her home “a little over two years ago,” transitioning slowly out of her office manager position. She offers custom embroidery, signs, banners, stickers, decals, laser engraving, and heat-transferred designs. Her teenage daughter is currently handling much of the business, which takes orders through their website, https://www. c2embroideryandvinyl. com/.
Also two years ago, Elliott’s family started a church plant from their home, after being trained as missionaries but unable to live abroad, with their children. Members of First Baptist Church, in Tecumseh, they had done the College Bible Ministry in the past. So, they began training church plant students from OBU with “one-on-one discipleship.”
Elliott is a member of the Shawnee Business Referral Network, which meets weekly and allows members to talk about their businesses. SBRN supports businesses by encouraging networking and word-of-mouth referrals, much like the Chamber.
“I want to make that same mentality of being like, ‘Hey, you have people to utilize, and you have these resources, and you have ways to network out your fellow business owners,’” she said. “Yeah, the more everybody succeeds, we all succeed together.”
In order to promote Tecumseh’s businesses to the surrounding communities, Elliott said she hopes the public will see their possibilities of a “staycation.” She described a conversation at Define Boutique and Design.
“He’s like, ‘You know, right now, gas prices are so high, people aren’t gonna road trip to Florida because that’s gonna be half their vacation budget. They’re going to be looking for places around where they can go.’ So, ‘how do we showcase where, like a small-town staycation?’,” she said.
“What is it that you could come to Tecumseh and spend all day doing? You could have breakfast at Farmer’s, enjoy the antique shops. You can go to Make It Yours, find some unique gifts. Hit Taco Boy for lunch. Go to Define and do some shopping. Get pampered. We’ve got salons; we’ve got nail shops. Like, you know, treat yourself to some flowers at Rustic.”
“... Take your kids to the Splash Pad. We have this amazing park to utilize. And so yeah, ‘How do I make people love Tecumseh as much as I do?’”
As a former duathlon racer, Elliott is glad to see spOKeLAHOMA bringing in the biking crowd to Tecumseh, along with recent and planned events.
“That building was like, barren forever, and now there’s a beautiful building in there with people riding bikes everywhere, there’s life,” she said. “And they’re bringing in … people from all over the place. Yes, that’s exactly what we need.”
For those businesses that are struggling, Elliott encouraged them to let the Chamber know what would help.
“That’s one of the questions that I’ve been going around asking the businesses, and I’m like, ‘What is it the Chamber can do for you? Like, is it social media pushes? Is it helping you get more foot traffic? Are you having problems hiring people? Like, what is it that is keeping you up at night?’ Because I know, as a business owner, we dream about this stuff,” she said.
