Emmaus Business Community gets new Leaders

In the last month or so, there was a quiet changing of the guard in the Emmaus business community.

Both the Emmaus Main Street Program and The Shops of Emmaus got new officers in February. Rick Zayaitz, former owner of Emmaus Bakery, currently with State Farm Insurance, is now president of EMSP. Zayaitz took over from Gene Clock.

Nicole Frierson, owner of The Weeping Yogi, is now president of The Shops of Emmaus, taking over from Kathleen Haney, founder and first president of SOE.

A natural question might be, in a town the size of Emmaus, why are there two merchant groups? The answer involves a little history.

As the older of the two, the Emmaus Main Street Program evolved from a national Main Street program meant to revitalize the nation’s historic downtowns. It was coincidental that Emmaus actually had a “Main Street.”

The EMSP is a non-profit program “to support and revitalize the Emmaus historic downtown,” according to its website. The priority for many of these programs was to make sure the infrastructure, the buildings and streets, was preserved and rehabilitated for use.

Incorporated in 1995, the EMSP was eventually funded by the state, with matching funds from the Borough. But Zayaitz wants to change that.

“I want the program to become self-sustaining,” he said, “and to stop taking money from the Borough. That’s my priority.”

The EMSP hasn’t gotten money from the state in several years, he said, and this year asked the Borough for half the money, $7,500, that it did last year.

“We understand that it’s a difficult economic environment,” Zayaitz said. “If we can completely raise our own funds, then that’s one less issue [Borough council] has on its platter.”

Currently, the EMSP has a $100,000 annual budget, and its primary sponsor is First Niagra Bank. Zayaitz said the program hopes to earn more of its budget through fundraisers, such as the proposed bike race this summer, which would also bring customers to downtown shops.

And that’s where the two organizations cross paths.

The Shops of Emmaus formally began in 2008 with the express purpose to “support businesses through cooperative advertising and community events,” according to its website. The idea is to bring people to Emmaus for events and then get those people in the shops.

SOE hosts the Say Yes to Scarecrows event in the fall, Toast of the Holidays in winter and the an annual Best in Bloom event in spring.

“I love the events we hold,” Frierson said in an email, “but I'd like to give attention to those times in between also.”

She said she’d like to have a monthly event, too, such as “Second Thursday,” which was done previously.

The problem is, Frierson suggests, that though Emmaus is a quaint, walkable town during the day, it seems as if it rolls up the sidewalks at night.

“I think our businesses should have more cohesiveness on hours of operation,” she said. “I'm not saying everyone should have the exact days or hours. I am saying that I don't know if [business owners] realize that they don't just hurt their own business by closing early, or not opening on a regular basis, but they also hurt the businesses around them.“

Anecdotally, Frierson said that most of her customers at The Weeping Yogi come during off hours.

“The problem is most of the time these clients come in after work, usually after 5 p.m., [when] most shops are closed,” she said.

Zayaitz agrees that working to get people to come to Emmaus is a top priority, but it is also up to the individual storeowners to attract those customers into their shops.
How to do that, Zayaitz says, is a “work in progress.”

Frierson echoes that, “We can have events to bring people downtown, but the merchants need to also attract those customers into their stores.”

Helping businesses do that is a priority for boths groups, and it is what unites them now.

Both presidents said there was some tension between the groups in the past, but now both are aligned with the same purpose.

“If we work together, there will be a lot less leg work to accomplish the same goals,” Zayaitz said.

To that point EMSP’s newly formed retail committee launched a Shop Local Shop Emmaus campaign that Frierson said she will also support.

“I think we should do what we can to give each other a hand up in anyway we can,” she said. What Emmaus businesses need most, she said, is “Unity. Cohesiveness. Commitment.”

And in the interest of unity, and socializing, there is an Emmaus business Meet and Greet March 24 at the VFW.

Put together by EMSP to introduce the Shop Local initiative, the Meet and Greet is for any and all Emmaus business owners and principals. It’s meant to be a stepping-stone to better business for all.