Buy from the Bush campaign: Cobram business reaps rewards from social media shoutout
With almost 200,000 followers across Facebook and Instagram, the Buy From the Bush campaign has helped double the sales of businesses such as Hens Teeth Trading in Cobram.
HENS Teeth Trading in Cobram is busier than it’s ever been.
Its website has been inundated with online sales and social media followers after the business was profiled by the Buy from the Bush campaign.
Started by Sydney woman Grace Brennan, the initiative to get people to buy from rural retailers has gone viral since it was created last month, with hundreds and thousands of followers across their Facebook and Instagram accounts.
Rebecca Loughridge and Gretchen Thorburn run the lifestyle boutique and said the impact of a single post on social media was unexpected.
“If I had to guess I would say sales have doubled, if not tripled.
“Our website had struggled to get traffic, let alone achieve sales for a couple of years,” Mrs Thorburn said.
After dealing with the effects of drought and lack of water for years, the shop had been barely getting by.
“We are in an area that’s really struggling with water at the moment and when the farmers have no money the whole economy slows down because people just don’t have disposable incomes. There are businesses shutting down all over the place and so it’s huge to have people from the city spending up here and from the point of view of spreading awareness of the difficulties up here,” Mrs Thorburn said.
Other business such as Hens Teeth have seen similar results after being featured and Mrs Thorburn encouraged other struggling retailers to get involved to help set themselves up for the Christmas season.
“We’re so incredibly grateful that they did that one post for us and it’s made a huge difference to our business leading up to Christmas.
“Business had been so tough that we couldn’t afford to purchase more stock and because of that one post we’ve been able to restock for Christmas,” she said.
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