Jan 7, 2008

Branding label promotes items from Delta regionBy Tara M. MantheyNWANews.com

Chance Williams wants you to do your shopping in Tyronza instead of the mall. Buy a painting from Marianna, find honey in Osceola or a get a wirewrapped gemstone pendant made in Piggott.

“If you have the option, why not purchase something that you can experience another person through?” Williams, a student at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service, said recently. “You are connecting to someone else and it’s not coming off an assembly line.”

Williams and two other Clinton School students, Sarah Argue and Julie West, are trying to revive self-sustaining local economies by helping artisans and craftspeople in the Arkansas Delta get their products onto shelves in mom-and-pop stores in Delta towns.

The Arkansas DeltaMade branding program was unveiled in October and was created by a local business development task force and the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Rural Heritage Development Initiative. More than 40 arts and crafts producers and 16 retailers are participating. They come from 15 counties in the Arkansas Delta region.

The program is designed to benefit both artisans and entrepreneurs in the Delta, said Beth Wiedower, field representative with the National Trust. Instead of being sold online in a centralized Web site, the products are placed on the shelves of local retailers. Many have downtown storefronts like drug stores and gift shops. Shop owners gain a tourist-friendly niche that separates them from big-box retailers.

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