‘Experience’ tries to put businesses on the map

We’ve all experie- nced Spo- kane. Or have we?

Jill Smith argues many have not. Certainly not all the thousands of visitors who come to the city each year have. She and partner Robert Johnson are promoting “Experience Spokane” as a way smaller local businesses can raise their profiles not only regionally and nationally, but internationally as well.

“Experience” combines maps, as road-tested a marketing tool as you can think of, and the Web, untested and untried by what Smith found was a remarkably high number of small businesses. At experiencespokane.com, they get a taste.

Not quite a year old, “Experience” has made its site available, through Google.com, in eight languages. Korean was recently added because the Spokane Regional Sports Commission will be in Seoul In March for SportAccord International, a group encompassing all things related to sports commerce and marketing.

“The more information we can give people, the better,” says Eric Sawyer, executive director of the Spokane Regional Sports Commission. He will also take maps prepared by the Spokane Convention & Visitors Bureau and Tourmap, a more-established commercial competitor of Experience based in Seattle.

If that seems like a lot of maps — and the Spokane Regional Chamber of Commerce has published another — Smith says Experience tries to set itself apart with a Web site that includes information on where to change money, tipping rates, even the time zone for those new to North America.

“It makes us look international,” she says.

For CVB President Harry Sladich, the concern was the look might deceive users into thinking they had hit the CVB site. That has not happened.

“I just didn’t want the customer to be confused,” he says.

Smith, who as an importer of hemp fabric has some experience with international commerce, says global exposure is a must for Spokane businesses. No matter how local you think your customer base, she says, “You are in international trade.”

Clearly, that’s the case for Spokane-area hotels trying to snag as many foreign visitors as possible, and links allow tourists to book rooms — in their own language — without leaving the Experience site. But there are dozens of small area businesses that could capture some of that traffic, and introduce themselves to more potential Inland Northwest customers, if properly promoted.

Smith says she looked at dozens of city Web sites and maps before launching “Experience” with Johnson. In her opinion, most were pretty thin soup. In sounding out local businesses, she says she was surprised that as many as 70 percent had no presence on the Web. She also discovered, pleasantly, that many young couples and individuals hoping to find a niche in Spokane’s marketplace were opening businesses of their own.

Again, Smith could identify. She co-founded and subsequently sold Buckeye Beans, which marketed prepackaged soups, unique pasta other dry foods. The company’s clever products — baseball-shaped pasta, for example — generated a lot of national publicity.

Eastern Washington University made Smith its first woman entrepreneur of the year in 1998.

Experience clients get “Quick Looks,” single pages within “experiencespokane.com” that feature photographs taken by Johnson and thumbnail descriptions of the business. Google “Boo Radley’s,” for example, and the Experience Web link to the quirky downtown retailer pops up, along with those for two bars in Alabama. Hard to confuse those with our sweet home.

Boo Radley’s owner Andy Dinnison says he likes the site’s hip look, and the fact that Experience is local. He says the store hands maps out to customers curious about shopping opportunities. Many hotels, as well as the CVB, hand out the Experience and Tourmap.

Smith concedes that the map remains the more powerful marketing tool. Clients say the Experience version has brought new customers to their door, but has also made sometimes isolated businesses aware of each other.

“We created a lot of buzz between businesses,” she says.

Smith, who says Washington Trust Bank sponsorship was vital to the Experience launch, hopes the map and site are a tonic for all area residents.

“I get tired of hearing people run Spokane down,” she says.

Maybe they aren’t experienced.