Canon City hopes to win big on makeover-style reality show
Small businesses in Canon city were hyped up early Tuesday morning after it was announced the mountain town is one six finalists in the reality TV show Small Business Revolution on Hulu.
The winning city gets a $500,000 revitalization grant, six businesses receive makeovers, and it’s all documented in an eight-part miniseries for the show’s fourth season.
Judges with the show visited Canon City back in January. Those judges have narrowed down the field of eligible small towns across America from 12,000 back in October to just six. Throughout this entire process, Canon City businesses have rallied together in order to win.
“I feel like we have come together more now than we ever have,” says Shae Sandritter, the manager at Touch of Love Florists and Weddings. Her business is one of six shops eligible for a makeover should Canon City end up victorious.
“We need help cosmetically or even help fix our logo, or teach us how to move dead merchandise,” said Sandritter. “We would greatly appreciate them helping us with a number of different aspects of the business.”
Tuesday morning, a large number of Canon City business owners met together to watch the live stream of the announcement of the final six American cities.
“The crowd went wild,” said Ryan Stevens the Economic Development Director with Canon City. “A lot of cheering, hooting and hollering, I couldn’t even hear the next four names that were called.”
Stevens hopes Small Business Revolution can make the Canon City less dependent on revenue from the summer time.
“Tourism starts to die down right after Labor Day. So we’ve got a pretty slow period between Labor Day and Memorial Day,” said Stevens “We’re trying to find ways to boost that and get more visitors here during that time.”
And if Canon City wins Small Business Revolution, the rest of Colorado wins.
“Nobody is getting into Canon city without flying into one of the two major airports or driving through one of our four borders,” said Stevens. “That’s economic activity for every community in the state of Colorado.”
But Canon City needs America’s vote if they hope to bring in the victory now.
You can vote for Canon City here.
You can vote once every day on any email that you currently own. However, you can’t make new email addresses and begin voting on those.
The voting period ends Feb. 19.
