Business Site Links Town's Shops, Customers

Jason Grant wants Hillsborough residents to shop local.

As a former township resident, his experience finding local businesses led him to create his own business that’s geared toward linking businesses and customers in town.

“I used to live here,” Grant said. “A long time ago, someone told me that the place to go for a new business was your own backyard.

“These were the issues that I had when I lived here,” he said. “I said, ‘where do I go to get here.”

His experience in marketing and branding led him to propose the Hillsborough Shopper’s Network, a website that not only compiles a running list of Hillsborough businesses, with links to their websites but allows them to list sales, offer deals, and melds digital and print advertising. The site, once launched, would also have a mobile phone application and the ability for businesses to offer deals via mobile phones or Bluetooth, he said.

It’s the first site of its kind in Somerset County, and, if successful, Grant hopes to expand it to other towns through the company he created, Purview Creative Strategy and Design, he said.

The anticipated launch is spring 2012, which follows spending December 2011 finding businesses to participate. Site development is expected to occur during the early months of 2012, he said.

While the features Grant envisions can be sought by individual businesses, his site would allow Hillsborough businesses to share the cost of developing each one. The cost to use the site and its features depends on the amount of businesses that sign up for it, however.

“You can do any of theses strategies on your own, but if you can share the costs, this is an advantage to yourself,” Grant said. “Instead of each site doing it on their own, they are doing it in a centralized space.”

Though the site’s still in planning stages, Grant also hopes to use it to help businesses create a personal brand for online and real-life marketing.

“Having a brand identity is the first step,” he said. “This is to help a business who doesn’t understand what it is develop it.”

While other vendors will handle site design, application development and other technology features, Grant intends to have each participating business involved in weekly planning and development calls.

A portion of the plans will be devoted to using social media, like Facebook and Twitter, in a way that markets Hillsborough businesses.

But the core of the site—besides directing residents to Hillsborough shops—is making each component work in a way that benefits each business.

“It’s getting these other components to interact,” Grant said. “There are tons of things but they have to make sense at the end of the day. It’s not so much what you are doing but how you are doing it.”