The "Small Business Revolution" team toured Siloam Springs and met with community members on Tuesday and Wednesday to determine if the town is a candidate to move on in the competition to be on Season 3 of the HULU original show.
Siloam Springs was the sixth town on the production crew's tour of the top 10 communities in the competition. The team will use information from the visits to pick the top five towns, which will be announced on Feb. 13. A public vote will be held to determine the finalist, which will receive $500,000 for revitalization and be featured on Season 3 of the show.
Siloam Springs was selected as one of the top 20 candidates in November and made the cut to the top 10 list in December.
The team, which includes host Amanda Brinkman as well as producers and a camera crew, was welcomed to Siloam Springs with a reception at the Brick Ballroom on Tuesday evening. On Wednesday morning, Kelsey Howard, director of Main Street Siloam Springs, led the group on a tour of the downtown area, where they visited with business owners and community members.
In the afternoon, the team visited with the video production students at the high school. Then they were given a sendoff by the police and fire departments.
"I love it," Brinkman said of Siloam Springs. "It's beautiful. It has a really great downtown. I'm really impressed with the business community. It seems like there's a great variety of businesses. ... It's very charming, and I'm very impressed with the town leadership. It seems like everyone's working together for a common goal."
Brinkman said the production team is looking for towns that are ready for a transformation.
"We're really focused on making sure that the town already has some momentum behind it, you know the cash investment and advice can only go so far," she said. "So we're building on momentum that already exists because it really takes the whole community to be backing the transformation for it really to take hold."
The team is also looking for a town that needs some help, she said.
"You know some towns might be already on their road to success and have the formula figured out themselves so we want to make sure that we're choosing a town that can really use the advice," Brinkman said. "A big part of what Deluxe brings to the table is not just the $500,000, but the marketing advice, branding, helping the businesses think through their logos and packaging and websites, and things like that, so we want to make sure there are businesses in town that can benefit from that."
Brinkman encouraged community members to follow "Small Business Revolution," as well as her personal accounts at @AmandaKBrinkman, for updates and announcements. Brinkman said she plans to announce the top five towns in a Facebook live video on the morning of Feb. 13.
Brinkman said people in Siloam Springs can also support the community's chances of being on the show by continuing to use the #MySiloamSprings and #SmallBusinessRevolution on their social media posts.
People will be able to watch short videos about the five finalists and vote for their favorite on the website, smallbusinessrevolution.org. Filming for the series will span from March until June.
General News on 01/21/2018