February 21, 2008 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

New Web site makes space for small businesses
by Jennifer Katz

Thanks to Wesley Michel’s marketing Web site, Local Index, local and independent businesses on the Avenue and elsewhere will have the ability to compete with big box stores while increasing traffic to their own businesses. (Photo by Erin Vertreace)

At first glance, 24-year-old Wesley Michel hardly looks the part of a steadfast advocate for small, locally owned businesses. Clean shaven, sharply dressed in casual business attire – wearing a black jacket with a white button down shirt underneath hanging loosely over his jeans and a striped tie, knotted but not tightened, around his neck.

Yet in 2004, when Michel learned that his aunt, a retail business owner in Tampa, had been put out of business after Wal-Mart opened a store in her neighborhood, he decided to scrap his plans to go to law school and to focus instead on creating a marketing tool that would allow his aunt and other small business owners to compete with large box stores via the Internet.

“I wanted to create a Web site that allowed local businesses to promote themselves online,” said Michel, who graduated from Arcadia University in 2002 with a business degree.

“Talking to my aunt, I became aware of the difficulty small businesses face in competing with larger retailers,” he said.

Michel, a Cheltenham resident, has spent the last eight months creating the Local Index, an Internet-based social gathering and marketing Web site for small, locally owned businesses. He has focused mainly on the South Street corridor in Center City and Germantown Avenue in Chestnut Hill. The Diamond Spa, 3000 BC, Osaka, Sanctuary and the Candle Shop are among the 100 that have listed on the Local Index thus far.

“The idea is to get customers to walk through the stores,” Michel said. “They see something on the Web site and then actually walk into the store to purchase the item.”

Part of the reason is to drive up traffic for small businesses. Another is to avoid the costly and difficult task of producing an online marketplace.

According to Michel, the technical difficulties of being able to process requests from any computer and interface with all of the merchants’ systems, while also insuring the transactions, far outweigh the benefit it could provide the merchants at this stage.

“Right now the idea is to provide small businesses with a presence on the Web that puts them in a better position to compete with the larger stores,” Michel said. “We want the stores listed on our site to come up when someone searches for a product. It’s a catalog that shows pictures of what’s available down the street.”

Michel started the company with financial backing from his father, Christian Michel, a painter, and has assembled a team of project developers, marketing specialists and eager merchants to launch the site. To join the Local Index as a merchant (shoppers can register as well), businesses can have no more than seven locations and 250 employees. That, Michel said, keeps the larger stores away.

The Local Index is designed to function much like the social Web site MySpace.com, which allows users to create their own page and interact with other users. Michel’s site provides a forum for business owners to create their own page and display their wares in addition to their own Web site or in lieu of paying the thousands of dollars it costs to create a Web site.

“This allows storeowners to showcase their services or products,” Michel said.

Another advantage the site offers — or hopes to as it grows — is the ability to compete in advertising with the larger outlets. When shoppers are searching online for a product or service (usually through one of two main search engines, Google or Yahoo), the large retailers pop up first – a premium placement that they pay enormous sums of money for and that no small business owner could ever afford.

The Local Index is poised to change that by leveraging its profit based on the combined value of the small businesses on the site to purchase prime advertising space on those sites.

“Our theory is that a group of businesses is stronger than just one,” he said. “It’s ironic that businesses spend thousands of dollars creating a Web site to then have to spend more money to advertise on Google and Yahoo, only to have their larger competitors pop up whenever anyone does a search on one of those sites.”

Michel admits that much of the site’s potential is to be realized in the future. For now, Michel and his team are still working on making the site function at its best.  Merchants and business owners can join the Index for free, as can shoppers or customers. As the site grows, sponsorship opportunities will become available to upgrade the amount of information or images that can be stored on the site, such as featured placement during searches and premium services like uploading videos and linking to YouTube.com and other Internet sites that provide marketing opportunities and drive traffic to both the Index and the businesses sites.

While the Index is being launched in Philadelphia, Michel said, the idea is to make it a national brand, hence the name.

“You can go anywhere and Google is Google,” he said. “That’s why we wanted to do something that we could market anywhere.”

Michel said the company’s plans include launching sites in every major city. There will also be an “I am the best” competition where users can vote for their favorite items or services providing an additional vehicle for promotion.

For more information or to register, visit www.thelocalindex.com.

Contact Jennifer Katz at 215-248-8804 or jenn@chestnuthilllocal.com.