| Issue No. 279 Serving the Entire Business Community November 2007 | |||
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HOLIDAY BASKET PROMOTION and GIFT CERTIFICATE PROGRAM HOLIDAY SHOPPING HOLIDAY BASKET PROMOTION 
This Holiday Season promotion is now a Chamber tradition and greatly anticipated by our community. We want to thank each of our Chamber member businesses for your past participation and we want to extend this invitation to all members, present and new, to participate again this year. The Christmas Basket promotion continues to be a very successful community effort and terrific exposure for our membership. Thousands of customer entries are received each year through our participating member businesses.Be a sign up location: This promotion brings customers into your store to sign up for one of four drawings and they must come into your business each week to sign up. At the end of each week, you bring the sign up slips to the Chamber office for the following week's drawing. Each of the four baskets contains one of the four like items you have donated. Donate 4 like items for the 4 baskets: During this Holiday Season, four (4) Gift Baskets highlighting products and services either sold or produced here in Plymouth are given away, one each week before Christmas. Obviously, retailers can focus on a specialty item they would like to promote and / or give four in store gift certificates. Every year, the Retail Merchants Committee extends this invitation to our Industrial members to feature products and services manufactured here; for example, Del Monte Foods Corporation ketchup or Bay Valley Foods, pickles. With your help we can raise the public's awareness of items sold and produced in our community and in what store to purchase that special item. Sign up now by calling 936-2323: If you would like to participate, please bring (4) four like items (one for each basket) to the Chamber office by Wednesday, November 14. Note - give your company credit - if the product or promotional item does not in itself identify your business, please attach some identifier to each item...your business card is perfect. And remember, actual products are wonderful and gift certificates for your store will bring the recipients back to see you. We prepare the baskets, display the contents of one basket in our large front window, and list the contents and donors beginning the week of Thanksgiving. So that we know what our participation will be, please call (574-936-2323) as soon as possible. Let us know if your business will be a registration site as well as donating the four items for the basket. Starting November 28, the first of the four drawings will begin. Thanks for your help in this promotion! We wish everyone a prosperous holiday season! KEEP CUSTOMERS SHOPPING PLYMOUTH FIRST GIFT CERTIFICATE PROGRAM: This Gift Certificate program is very easy and safe to use. If your business receives payment by cash or check for the goods or services you provide, then your company should be able to participate in the Chamber's gift certificate program. The recipients of these gift certificates will look at the list of participating businesses that is provided with each gift certificate and may choose to spend their gift for something that has never occurred to them before. Gift certificate(s) may be ordered from the Chamber office and online (order form) by any person or company in our community. These gift certificates are then presented as general gifts or as part of an employee bonus or Christmas gift program. There is no cost above the face dollar value of the certificate. The purchaser picks up the certificate(s) order at the Chamber office (120 N. Michigan St.) and tenders payment to the Plymouth Area Chamber of Commerce in cash or by check (sorry, no plastic). The gift certificate is a legal check, purchased by any gift giver and can be accepted by any participating Chamber member business with the same confidence as a cashiers check or as cash and, thus, is treated as cash. The certificates are individually typed with the pertinent information - the dollar amount (up to $100.00 per certificate), the recipient's name, if applicable, and in the memo area, a greeting of up to 30 characters or the name of the company giving the gift certificate(s). Personalizing these with the recipient's name will make these second party checks and, therefore, must be endorsed, but remember that these are pre-purchased gift certificates. The money goes directly into one bank account specifically for gift certificate purposes only, thus making these checks as good as cash. The merchant treats these checks like cash and makes change just as if he or she has received cash. Each certificate is then placed in an envelope along with a cover letter and the list of participating Chamber member businesses (merchant list) from which the recipient of the gift certificate selects the place in which to make their purchase or purchases. The list of participating Chamber member businesses is also available from the front page of the Chamber's website. Please note, a Chamber member's business is not automatically put on this list when they join the Chamber. Chamber member businesses must let the Chamber office know they want to be included on the gift certificate participating merchant list. Gift certificates will bring new and existing customers to the participating store. This is a form of advertising dollars that Plymouth Area Chamber of Commerce member merchants do not have to expend. Enclosed with this NewsMonth is our current list of participating members. If your business is not listed and you want to participate, please call us at 936-2323 and have us add your business to the list. If for any reason you no longer wish to participate, let us know and we will remove your listing. Every year there is a tremendous increase in the purchase of Chamber gift certificates. Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of these Chamber Bucks have been in circulation over the Christmas Holidays. A vast number of these certificates are purchased by many of Plymouth's Industrial businesses for their employees. And, throughout the year, individuals purchase gift certificates as gifts for all occasions. All Plymouth Area Chamber of Commerce members are invited to take advantage of this program, both as gift givers and especially as participating businesses. It is a great way to give and a great way to keep our member businesses in the public's spending loop. Shop Plymouth First! That is what this is all about!  
Teachers Credit Union
201 Goshen Road, Plymouth; 1501 N Oak Road, Plymouth, 574-936-8926 or 936-4766; www.tcunet.com TCU is introducing their High Deductible Health Plan (HDHP) for businesses. Their No Fee Health Savings Account (HSA) allows employees to accumulate money for medical expenses while earning interest. The TCU HSA program offers the following: No set up fees, No monthly fees, No minimum balance, Earns 5.00% APY, Unlimited check writing, Unlimited debit card transactions, Earn .5% on all signature based debit card purchases*, Free internet banking, and Contributions can be made pretax by the employer or employee. To learn more about their No Fee HSA account, contact your nearest TCU Service Center. *See TCU Visa Check Card Terms and Conditions for details. Gibson Insurance Group 333 E. Jefferson Street, Plymouth, 574-936-2122; www.gibsonins.com Gibson Insurance Group is part of an elite group of independent insurance agencies around the United States to retain Best Practices status in 2007 from Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America (IIABA). Gibson Insurance Group first received the honor in 1994 and has retained the Best Practices status every year since. Only three other agencies in the state of Indiana received this honor in 2007. Best Practices firms are agencies taking part in an annual study that has become a prestigious recognition of the superior accomplishments of the top insurance agencies in the country. Each year, the IIABA and Reagan Consulting, an Atlanta-based management consulting firm, join forces to evaluate the country's leading firms. . Gibson has offices in Indianapolis, South Bend, and Plymouth, Indiana, with clients and association member clients throughout the country. Plymouth Public Library 201 N. Center Street, Plymouth, 574-936-2324; www.plymouth.lib.in.us NEWS FROM OUR LIBRARY: Sunday, November 18 The Plymouth Public Library will host the second annual Purdue Extension Homemakers Chorus "Food for Songs" singing for food donations to help stock the American Red Cross Food Pantry in assisting those in need in the Marshall County area on Sunday, Nov. 18th in the Laramore Rooms A&B from 2-3:00 p.m. Admission for this event will be donations in the way of canned & boxed food (non-perishable), paper items (such as toilet tissue/kleenex/paper towel etc.), and/or personal items (such as shampoo, toothpaste, etc.). Wednesday, November 21 MARK YOUR CALENDARS - the Friends of the Library will be having their annual BAKE SALE in front of the adult circulation desk at the Plymouth Public Library on Wed., Nov. 21st from 9 a.m. until SOLD OUT. Please support your "friends" by bringing in baked goods to sell or by coming in to buy some goodies for over the Thanksgiving holiday. Friday, November 30 November 30th the South Bend Symphony Woodwind Quartet will perform at the Plymouth Public Library in the Laramore Rooms A&B from 6:30-7:30 p.m. You won't want to miss hearing them play! Saturday, December 1 The THIRD annual Adult Reading Program will take place at the Plymouth Public Library - sign-up beginning December 1st at the adult circulation desk. Come in and learn all about the program. See how you can read and win prizes from Jan. thru Mar., 2008 Don't get left out in the cold this winter - join the "Frosty Readers" for snowballs of fun!!. November 2007
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