What does it mean to be a part of GROW? Aaron Cole from Josie’s Transport explains:
“After buying Josie’s Transport in February 2018 we soon joined GROW, as we wanted to keep the fantastic name that Josie’s has in the local community, keep that identity, be part of Geelong and support local business.
“We provided our spend data as a baseline to see who our local suppliers are. Our major spend items are wages, fuel and tolls etc. So we changed our fuel supplier from BP to Riordans, who are local and they also gave us a competitive price. We have also moved a number of our suppliers to Geelong businesses where we can. Most of our smaller suppliers were already from Geelong so we made the point to meet with these suppliers and assure them we are committed to supporting Geelong business which we have done.
“All our team know that you first look for a business in Geelong. It may not always be available but they know that you have to start by checking out Geelong businesses first. We don’t actually think there is much more we can do to shift our spend to Geelong now. So we are trying to support Geelong businesses in other ways, for example Goop (another GROW signatory) are developing the website for our business in Melbourne.
“We know we are a Geelong business; we are committed to continuing to doing our bit to support other Geelong businesses. It gives us a real sense of community which is important to everyone at Josie’s.”
Thanks to Aaron and the Josie’s team for their generosity to our community. We will be sharing new stories from GROW signatories on a regular basis, contact the team if you’d like to tell us your GROW good news story.
