Chamber’s Tied Together helps Lee’s Summit businesses celebrate reopenings

A ribbon has long been central to the timeless tradition marking a business opening.

And the Lee’s Summit Chamber of Commerce wasn’t going to let a pandemic take away the energy from the popular celebration.

“Ribbon cuttings are an essential element of opening a new business,” said Taylor Smith, the chamber’s director of marketing and communications. The event, he said, helps new business owners make critical connections.

When the Lee’s Summit business community began to emerge from the health crisis lockdown earlier this year, the chamber knew it needed a different celebration.

“When so many businesses were forced to close in response to the pandemic, we wanted to find a way to help our community businesses, both new and long-established, celebrate their reopening when it was time,” Smith said.

Tied Together was created.

Each business enrolled in the program gets two pieces of ribbon and a “We’re All in This Together” poster. Businesses were encouraged to use the ribbon in a social media post helping to signal a reopening to customers and clients.

The symbolism was important, said Debbie Stoddard, owner of Budget Blinds.

“The Tied Together program was not only a literal symbol with the physical ribbons, which we hope to gather soon and tie together with our community, but a figurative symbol of how we all come together when times are tough and lean on one another to keep us all tied together in unity,” Stoddard said.

Smith said the past seven months have brought many challenges to chamber members.

“The virtual aspect of how we connect has been a major hurdle,” Smith said. “Our members have always been active in-person and prefer to meet and visit with their peers face-to-face.

“It’s what sets our chamber apart from many other chambers of our size.”

Smith said even with almost 1,000 members, everyone wants to know each other and welcome new businesses.

“Doing this virtually was difficult, which made the process of reopening businesses difficult,” Smith said. “It meant our members couldn’t be physically present to celebrate the reopening of each business. However, within the past few months we have returned to conducting ribbon cutting ceremonies and it is as if we never skipped a beat.”

The goal was to gather all the Tied Together participants, which now number more than 100, when it was safe and line them up along Main Street, Smith said.

“We will tie every ribbon together and perform a citywide ribbon cutting,” he said.

“While it may seem like the pandemic will last forever, there will come a time when we see a sense of normalcy again. We hope this final Tied Together ceremony will serve as an historic moment to celebrate what our business community has survived and officially mark the end of this challenging experience.”

That’s a celebration to look forward to, said Trish Goodale, of Midwest Property Resources.

“The Tied Together program shows how our community businesses support one another,” Goodale said. “And shows our strength and resilience in the face of a global pandemic.”

For more information about the program, go to www.lschamber.com/tiedtogether.

This story was originally published October 22, 2020 at 5:00 AM.