ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, May 21, 1996 TAG: 9605210050
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: PULASKI
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
Looking for a lawyer? A lawn mower? A lavaliere?
As president of the Pulaski Business Alliance, Pat Gooch thought there should be a way for local residents to check out stores and offices in Pulaski for whatever item they need, before immediately deciding to shop out of town.
"It's easier to spend your money here than to drive somewhere else," Gooch said. "No one has much time in their lives anyway ... beyond all the arguments as to why it makes sense to spend your money here and put your tax dollars here."
Soon, there will be a telephone number people can call to ask for an item or a service and be referred to local businesses that provide it.
"We've been calling it the Pulaski Purchase Program," Gooch said. "Nobody's come up with anything better."
Volunteers in Pulaski and students at the Southwest Virginia Governor's School are working on the new way for business and professional people in Pulaski to advertise their goods and services.
Forms are being circulated to shops and offices for listings of the name of each business, address, telephone number, hours of operation, contact persons, and up to 25 specific products or services offered.
A major question for businesses completing those forms, Gooch said, is "What do you have that people don't know about?"
A team of seniors at the Governor's School will enter all this information into a database. Chris Sumner is leading the group. The other students are Anthony Yoder, Jack Warburton, Nathan Brown and Carrie Ratcliffe.
The database will be located at the Retired Senior Volunteer Program, where volunteers will answer the telephone during the day, type in the good or service being sought, and tell the caller where it is available.
Gooch is the owner of The Casimir Company in downtown Pulaski. Even after a year, she still has people discovering her. "I didn't know there was a frame shop in Pulaski," they will tell her. "For some reason, people don't know I'm here."
Other merchants have expressed similar concerns. So has the town's Economic Development Board, which thought at first in terms of a business directory. But directories can become outdated quickly, Gooch said.
Gooch and others came up with the idea of the database, but couldn't find a place for people to call for the information - until she mentioned it to Carolyn Duncan at the RSVP center.
"We could answer it here," Duncan said. "I think we can do it." The RSVP center is open weekdays during regular business hours.
"Ideally, I'd like it to be answered Saturdays and evenings, but we'll have to grow for that," Gooch said.
But the RSVP volunteers solved the major problem of where to station the telephone. "The next stumbling block was finding someone to create the database, and I thought I was going to have to go out of town to do it, which was sort of ironic," Gooch said.
Pat Duncan, director of the Governor's School, solved that problem with some of its students taking it on as a project.
Since all the students working on it are seniors, Gooch said, they will be graduating soon and other students will have to provide the support needed in case software questions arise.
The database will have to be user-friendly so the volunteers accessing it for callers can go quickly to the information being requested.
The program also will tell businesses how many inquiries they are getting about a certain service or product, and perhaps allow them to adjust their own inventory.
It will allow Pulaski to collect information on requests for what is not available, and what kind of new business might do well if it located in Pulaski. If there were 100 calls in a week asking about office supplies, for example, "that would tell you something," Gooch said.
In that way, the program could become a tool for bringing new business to Pulaski, she said.
The Business Alliance has approved $500 toward establishing the database and telephone line. The Economic Development Board has added another $500, on the condition that the service be offered at no cost for at least the first year.
"The big thing is going to be getting the businesses and professionals on line," Gooch said. Once that is done, she said, "we can keep it current."
Gooch said the concept could be expanded in the future, to include announcements of community events, church listings and other information.
In the future, she said, it would be great if all this could be put on an interactive computer screen somewhere for people to access.
"Of course, the Governor's School's capable of putting it on line," she said. "But basically just having a phone is all we're asking here."
If the idea catches on, she said, its developers might even be able to package it and sell it to other communities and save them the time and trouble of creating their own software. "If I saw somewhere that I could order this program for $49.95, it would probably be easier to do," she said. "I feel like it'll be something that'll focus the town on the town."
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