The Chatham-Kent Chamber of Commerce’s new chair has said he wants to use his year-long term to promote local shopping as more COVID-19 measures are removed in Ontario.
Daniel Josling, who works as the manager of business relations for energy firm Aladaco Consulting, has moved into the role after first joining the board in 2020.
“My priority for this term is to promote shopping local, getting consumers back into local stores and experience what shopping really should be, as opposed to just making it quick online and having it delivered to your door,” he said.
“I really want to showcase and have businesses show their customers the benefit of local shopping and the additional customer service they get.”
The local chamber worked on a Shop Local campaign over the last year in partnership with other chambers of commerce and business improvement areas in Chatham-Kent. Josling said he wants to “leverage” its success going forward and continue working with these other organizations.
This could mean marketing “Chatham-Kent as a region more than individual communities within Chatham-Kent,” he said.
Josling previously worked for local utility Entegrus before starting at his current job. The consulting company works virtually, so Josling works from his home on projects across Canada.
He said he wanted to move into the chair role because he sees opportunities to showcase Chatham-Kent.
“I think Chatham has got a lot of things to offer the business community, both locally and nationally and internationally, and I wanted to be part of that transition from mainly being a manufacturing town into a broad diverse economy,” Josling said.
Shifting into high-tech manufacturing as electric vehicle manufacturing ramps up in Canada is one way to add more jobs to the area, he said.
Josling said from what he has been hearing some barriers have been removed to make it easier to do business in Chatham-Kent, but there are still challenges ahead.
“We’ve traditionally been the place where people can go for cheap real estate. There has been an abundance of old manufacturing buildings that were vacant,” he said.
“Now, all those buildings have been filled, so we need to continue making ourselves more attractive as we have to compete with other municipalities for business.”