It would make a great story to say that BLIP was created in that one "AHA" moment where you are blissfully sleeping until suddenly you had the epiphany of a lifetime. Instead, great ideas usually result in attempts and failures, trials and errors, and most likely being in the right place at the right time.

So it is with BLIP. It started with recognizing a need for low cost advertising targeted to the local market without the need to sacrifice quality. It was formed with the simple premise that independent small businesses and locally owned franchises were dependent upon the acceptance and loyalty of the local residents. That the great majority of their business was obtained from customers who lived within five miles of their location.

Unbeknownst to us, as we were burning the midnight oil and developing our plan, our local Mooresville-South Iredell Chamber of Commerce was ready to launch their BUY LOCAL campaign. After attending their launch event it became crystal clear that there had to be a way to join forces to not only raise the awareness and importance of Buying Local within the business community, but to do the same with the general population of the town.

Collectively, the Buy Local Ad Magazine was created. It provides a low cost, high quality ad magazine for locally owned businesses to reach the community. Fortunately for all involved, it has been extremely successful. But, it wasn't enough. More needed to be done to really involve the community so they would change their buying habits and remember the importance of buying local.

One day as we were walking out of a meeting and heading to our cars we were still racking our brains as to how to involve the community in the Buy Local campaign. When reaching for the keys it hit us, why not a Buy Local keytag (like these grocery store keytags) that would promote loyalty to locally owned businesses and make it worth their while to do so. In essence, pay them for their loyalty. That is how Buy Local It Pays was created. We call it BLIP for the simple reason that Buy Local It Pays would have made the keytag way too big.