Tres miembros del personal de Main Street America delante de un mural en Marion, Iowa.

Marion, Iowa © Tasha Sams

Acerca de

Trabajamos en colaboración con miles de socios locales y líderes de base de todo el país que comparten nuestro compromiso de fomentar la prosperidad compartida, crear economías resistentes y mejorar la calidad de vida.

Visión general Quiénes somos Cómo trabajamos Colaboraciones de socios Nuestros colaboradores Nuestro equipo Oportunidades de empleo Póngase en contacto con nosotros
Dos miembros de la comunidad de Emporia Kansas posan con un cartel que dice "Soy un Main Streeter"

Emporia, Kansas © Emporia Main Street

Nuestra red

Formadas por pueblos pequeños, comunidades de tamaño medio y distritos comerciales urbanos, las miles de organizaciones, personas, voluntarios y líderes locales que componen Main Street America™ representan la amplia diversidad que hace que este país sea tan singular.

Visión general Programas de coordinación Comunidades de Main Street Impacto colectivo Premios y reconocimientos Marco comunitario de evaluación Únete al movimiento
Dionne Baux y un socio de MSA trabajando en Bronzeville, Chicago.

Chicago, Illinois © Main Street America

Recursos

¿Busca estrategias y herramientas que le ayuden en su trabajo? Sumérgete en el Centro de Recursos de Main Street y explora una amplia gama de recursos, entre los que se incluyen nuestro extenso Centro de Conocimientos, oportunidades de desarrollo profesional, ofertas de servicios sobre el terreno, apoyo a la promoción y mucho más.

Visión general Centro de conocimiento Servicios de campo Relaciones gubernamentales Conferencia Main Street Now Instituto Main Street America Apoyo a las pequeñas empresas Allied Member Services El punto Área de miembros
Personas en e-scooters en Waterloo, Iowa

Waterloo, Iowa © Main Street Waterloo

Lo último

Su ventanilla única para conocer las últimas historias, noticias, eventos y oportunidades -incluidas subvenciones y programas de financiación- en Main Street.

Visión general Noticias Eventos y oportunidades Suscríbase a
Mujer y niña en un puesto del festival en Kendall Whittier, Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Kendall Whittier - Tulsa, Oklahoma © Kendall Whittier Main Street

Participa

Únase a nosotros en nuestro trabajo para fomentar la prosperidad compartida, crear economías fuertes y mejorar la calidad de vida en los centros y distritos comerciales de los barrios.

Visión general Únete a nosotros Renueve su afiliación Donar Asóciese con nosotros Oportunidades de empleo
Tres miembros del personal de Main Street America delante de un mural en Marion, Iowa.

Marion, Iowa © Tasha Sams

Acerca de

Trabajamos en colaboración con miles de socios locales y líderes de base de todo el país que comparten nuestro compromiso de fomentar la prosperidad compartida, crear economías resistentes y mejorar la calidad de vida.

Visión general Quiénes somos Cómo trabajamos Colaboraciones de socios Nuestros colaboradores Nuestro equipo Oportunidades de empleo Póngase en contacto con nosotros
Dos miembros de la comunidad de Emporia Kansas posan con un cartel que dice "Soy un Main Streeter"

Emporia, Kansas © Emporia Main Street

Nuestra red

Formadas por pueblos pequeños, comunidades de tamaño medio y distritos comerciales urbanos, las miles de organizaciones, personas, voluntarios y líderes locales que componen Main Street America™ representan la amplia diversidad que hace que este país sea tan singular.

Visión general Programas de coordinación Comunidades de Main Street Impacto colectivo Premios y reconocimientos Marco comunitario de evaluación Únete al movimiento
Dionne Baux y un socio de MSA trabajando en Bronzeville, Chicago.

Chicago, Illinois © Main Street America

Recursos

¿Busca estrategias y herramientas que le ayuden en su trabajo? Sumérgete en el Centro de Recursos de Main Street y explora una amplia gama de recursos, entre los que se incluyen nuestro extenso Centro de Conocimientos, oportunidades de desarrollo profesional, ofertas de servicios sobre el terreno, apoyo a la promoción y mucho más.

Visión general Centro de conocimiento Servicios de campo Relaciones gubernamentales Conferencia Main Street Now Instituto Main Street America Apoyo a las pequeñas empresas Allied Member Services El punto Área de miembros
Personas en e-scooters en Waterloo, Iowa

Waterloo, Iowa © Main Street Waterloo

Lo último

Su ventanilla única para conocer las últimas historias, noticias, eventos y oportunidades -incluidas subvenciones y programas de financiación- en Main Street.

Visión general Noticias Eventos y oportunidades Suscríbase a
Mujer y niña en un puesto del festival en Kendall Whittier, Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Kendall Whittier - Tulsa, Oklahoma © Kendall Whittier Main Street

Participa

Únase a nosotros en nuestro trabajo para fomentar la prosperidad compartida, crear economías fuertes y mejorar la calidad de vida en los centros y distritos comerciales de los barrios.

Visión general Únete a nosotros Renueve su afiliación Donar Asóciese con nosotros Oportunidades de empleo
Two flower crawl participants hold their bouquets while they browse the merchandise in a participating retailer.

Flower crawl participants hold their bouquets while they browse the merchandise in a participating retailer. © Fredericksburg Main Street

In the past year, downtown Fredericksburg has seen a drop in foot traffic. We have a historic downtown located halfway between Richmond, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. This reduction in foot traffic is coming from a decrease in visitation from the surrounding zip codes that touch Fredericksburg. After sharing this data with our Promotions Committee, we decided to start hosting a quarterly shop crawl to bring people downtown. These crawls are hosted by Fredericksburg Main Street in partnership with our city’s Economic Development and Tourism (EDT) office.

Each shop crawl is ticketed, typically between $40-$50 per person. On the day of the event, attendees check in at the Visitor Center to pick up a map showing which shops are participating, as well as a little swag or tote bag to get them started. 

These downtown shopping events have taken many different forms, from a cookie crawl during the holidays to a Galentine’s Day crawl in February where each shop hosted a unique activity like wine tasting, card making, and more. 

Our most recent shop crawl was a flower crawl. Drawing on inspiration from Georgetown Main Street and Harrisonburg Downtown Renaissance, who have both hosted similar events, we hosted the Downtown Flower Crawl on the Saturday of Mother’s Day weekend. For this event, attendees received an individual flower at each participating shop, allowing them to build a full bouquet while they explored our downtown retailers.

So, why do we love shop crawls? And how can you implement your own flower crawl? Let’s dive into the details. 

Four women holding flowers browsing goods in a stationary shop

Attendees browsing a shop with their bouquets. © Fredericksburg Main Street

Benefits of Shop Crawls

The goal of any shop crawl is to attract visitors to our Main Street district, support our retailers by driving foot traffic to their shops, and encourage people to move throughout our downtown. 

Since we began hosting shop crawls, we’ve heard from retailers and attendees that these events have introduced customers to businesses they might not have known about or wouldn’t have normally visited. Our retailers always report they have great sales during the shop crawl, and that the event also produces additional sales later. Often, we learn people come back for gifts or something for themselves that they saw during a shop crawl. 

Planning and Logistics

For any shop crawl, our first priority is to recruit participation from our retailers. Since we have hosted crawls in the past, our small business owners are already familiar with this event structure. If you are new to crawls, you may need to do more significant outreach, like hosting a meeting or speaking to individual retailers in person. For each crawl, we send our retailers a simple sign-up form by email approximately 10 – 12 weeks in advance of the event date. For the flower crawl, 24 shops signed up to participate. 

Next, we create an event listing on our website to give people the opportunity to purchase tickets. We use our website’s built in event calendar feature, but this could also be done with Eventbrite or another ticketing platform. Since this was the first year that we hosted the flower crawl, we limited tickets to 100 participants. We also created a Facebook event and promoted the event on social media. The event sold out!

We originally wanted to work with someone locally to source the flowers, but unfortunately, this did not work out. Instead, we created an account with a flower wholesaler in Maryland that had a large variety. This decision ensured that the crawl ticketholders received flowers that were not only vibrant and beautiful, but also unique and interesting. 

We arranged to have our order arrive two days before the crawl event. Unfortunately, we were not prepared for work that needed to be done to each flower stem to make them presentable! Here is a piece of advice: have a team of board members and/​or volunteers ready to help prep wholesale flowers. We ordered 2,500 stems and each one had to be prepped by hand — this included trimming the ends, pulling the leaves off the stem, and fluffing the flowers. Then, we placed them in buckets of water to ensure the blooms opened. I had two board members helping, and it took the three of us almost 12 hours over two days to prepare all the flowers.

A person holding some stems of greenery helps another person set up their flower carrier. The other person is also holding the map of the crawl.

An attendee receives their flower carrier and map at check-in. © Fredericksburg Main Street

Executing the Event

To ensure a smooth event, we sent an email to all ticketholders a few days before with information on parking in downtown Fredericksburg and check-in details. When hosting our shop crawls, we end check-in 90 minutes before the end of the event to make sure everyone is able to complete the crawl within the event hours. 

A few hours before the crawl kicked off, a board member and I delivered a bucket of flowers to each retailer along with a list of ticket holders for them to check off. 

When event attendees arrived at the Visitor Center, they were greeted and checked-in using their registration name. Attendees received a map of participating retailers, a small swag bag of goodies provided by the EDT office, a few sprigs of eucalyptus and other greenery to get their bouquets started, and chip board flower carrier to keep all of their stems secured as they traveled between crawl stops. 

None of the shops in our downtown are large enough to handle that many people coming in at once, so we created two different maps to alternate where people started and ended. All attendees visited the same shops, just in a different order. 

After checking in, ticketholders were sent on their way from shop to shop, collecting one stem at each stop. Once they completed the crawl, they had a beautiful bouquet of flowers that included 24 flowers and a few sprigs of greenery — plus any items they purchased from our retailers! 

Measuring Success

The event was successful based on our goals, and we raised money to support our other programs. For this crawl, we charged $40 per ticket and sold 100 tickets. We spent $2,500 on flowers and supplies, leaving $1,500 to go toward Fredericksburg Main Street programs. 

After the event, participating retailers reported positive results. Our post-event survey returned feedback including sales were up,” it made a great Saturday, which we needed,” and we met several new customers that had never been in our shop that said they would be returning.”

Since these events limited to the number of tickets sold, they are not focused on drawing large crowds to our downtown. Instead, we emphasize increasing visibility of our shops, creating a fun and inviting atmosphere in our downtown, and encouraging people to explore the district to discover a shop they may not have known existed.

Two women holding bouquets of flowers and shopping bags

Attendees pose with their completed bouquets. © Fredericksburg Main Street

Planting the Seeds for Future Crawls

After reviewing the feedback from our shops, we are thinking about adding a few adjustments to our quarterly crawl events:

  • Increasing capacity: This was a popular event, and we want to increase the number of tickets available. To do so, we may need to recruit more shops to participate.
  • Other activities along the way: We are looking at ways to encourage event attendees to stay downtown even longer. So, we are thinking about adding live music on the streets, a selfie station, or other interactive options during shop crawls.

Get Crawling in Your Downtown

If you are interested in creating a shop crawl like this for your Main Street, here are few pieces of advice: 

  • Planning and logistics are key. Make sure you have everything you need, from supplies and flowers to the volunteers and check-in procedures.
  • Prepare for a lot of pre-event work. Depending on the number of flowers needed, be sure to have 3 – 5 volunteers ready to help a few days before the event to prepare them. It is a large job to accomplish alone.
  • Communicate early and often. We make sure to clearly communicate all the details to the retailers multiple times before the event to ensure they know what to expect. We also recommend sending out a post-event survey to participating retailers to gather feedback and measure impact.
  • Map out the crawl. Depending on the number of attendees compared to the number of participating shops, you might need to create multiple versions of a crawl sequence to stagger when people are going to each shop. This will help prevent any overcrowding and will help ensure a relaxed and enjoyable experience retailers and attendees alike.
  • Have fun! I always tend to get stressed out the week leading up to a shop crawl, but it is important to have fun and enjoy the ride. I try to remind myself that this event is designed to get people downtown and to bring new customers to local businesses. At the end of the day, it is good work!

Ready, Set, Bloom!

And there you have it! With these steps, you’re ready to host your own flower crawl and bring some flower power to your Main Street. When in doubt, focus on these key elements: shop involvement, creative planning, and a whole lot of fun.

So, what are you waiting for? Start planning, spread the word, and watch your downtown bloom! 🌸🌼🌺