ABOUT
What started as a labor of love for our local Charlottesville has become a national collection of over 25 City Guides capturing the best of local. Our local editors across the country and the HQ team in Charlottesville love living local. Whether at home or traveling, the small business owners and local artisans we meet around the country inspire us.
Thank you for your support along the way. We encourage you to keep loving local, building up our town and supporting local artisans in the cities you visit. To explore the collection of City Guides and discover the best of local checkout our features, blog, archive and be sure to visit often for new tales of local talent that we’ve discovered across the nation.
THE CO-FOUNDERS
Susie Matheson was an avid shopper and supporter of all things local in her town. She had created a powerful voice that would have people of all ages running to whatever she featured on her blog.
Christy Ford, an owner of an established and successful antique and home store in Charlottesville was growing frustrated with the onslaught of out-of-towners that would come into her store, And George, and ask “Why is Charlottesville so drab? Where are Prada and Gucci?” She was constantly writing down names and drawing maps of where to find her favorite shops, artists and restaurants.
Susie came to Christy, good friends for years, with the proposition of creating a guide that would represent the beauty and soul of C’ville, the town they both adored and felt so lucky to call home.
The Scout Guide was created as a beautiful guide that anyone would feel proud to have on their coffee table, a piece of art that would capture and convey the passions behind the wonderful businesses in Charlottesville. A piece that would not be thrown away, that would live with its recipients and would become a resource to be used time and again.
Christy & Susie knew they could produce a beautiful book, but beyond that they knew it required a leap of faith from each of the fellow local businesses that decided to join them for the premier issue. Almost instantly, they were seeing the effects. Calls to businesses from all over the country. Christy and Susie began to realize that people could shop local from afar and were doing it when given the resource of the Guide. TSG businesses were seeing their ads pay for themselves in the first few months of publication.
Inquiries started to arrive, asking if Christy & Susie planned to publish guides to other towns. While it was another leap of faith, Christy & Susie welcomed the opportunity and decided to give it a try. With the boom of e-commerce they began to believe it was possible, to be a small fish in a big pond, to be from a small town but be accessible to all on the web. With each Guide that is added to the network, the platform becomes stronger. Collectively local businesses are more powerful together than alone.