Crisp Small Business Resource Center supports ShopRuralDay

The first-ever ShopRuralDay is scheduled for Nov. 11 2021, from noon until midnight. This shopping festival will be the first national livestreaming e-commerce event featuring rural North Carolina businesses.

“While only North Carolina rural businesses can sell at this event, they will garner new customers from across America,” said Dennis Tracz, event organizer.

Customers will download the Popshop.Live app on IOS or Android to purchase products from a potential 250 businesses.

ShopRuralDay is the brainchild of Accelerate Rural NC, a program of East Carolina University’s Crisp Small Business Resource Center, to support rural businesses going into the holidays.

“We’re (Accelerate Rural NC) partnering with several leading rural economic development and marketing organizations in North Carolina, as well as with Popshop.Live, to pioneer livestreaming e-commerce on Nov. 11.”

Along with the Crisp Center, major sponsors include NC IDEA, Campbell University, NC Rural Center, HarvestBeam, NC East Alliance, Buttermilk Creative, Farm Bureau of North Carolina, Tabletop Media, NC Electric Cooperatives, NC Specialty Foods, GottobeNC, Code the Dream, and Thread Capital.

Key Points

• Technology partner Popshop.Live will support participating merchant customers from noon until midnight EDT on 11/11/21. They will also cover the merchants’ shipping costs.
• Each merchant will offer special deals and buying opportunities for an incredible day of selling.
• Participating merchants will be announced soon, but expect incredible ones with wonderful opportunities to support rural North Carolina businesses.
• The event will be live on popshop.live and other websites, which will be announced soon.

Benefits for Rural Businesses

For retailers and brands, ShopRuralDay offers several benefits, which include

• allowing customers to support rural North Carolina businesses through a fun and accessible platform;
• enabling companies to kick-start the holiday shopping season via livestreaming e-commerce; and
• being able to trial run the livestreaming e-commerce platform in a one-time, commitment-limited way to see if it fits their strategy.

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