Featured

On-line Shopping coming to the BenGil community

Published

14 years ago

November 14, 2011

Admin

BenGil residents will soon be able to order products from local merchants 24 hours per day, 365 days per year from a new on-line e-commerce website called www.shopgpie.com.

G-Pie Media, LLC, is putting the final touches on an e-commerce platform that will allow small communities, much like Gillespie and Benld, the ability to allow their brick and mortar businesses to create virtual storefronts and sell products on the web. Every storefront will be hosted and displayed on one site, much like a shopping mall.

According to one of the founders, T.J. Allan, “Within the next 5 years, if your small business doesn’t have a web presence, it won’t have a presence at all. And now with the explosion of Facebook and web 2.0, your web presence needs to do more than just act like a billboard. It needs interactivity, and the ability to sell products directly from your site. Your customers are on-line. You need to be too. The question for small businesses in small communities becomes, ‘Do we need an individual website?’ We don’t think you do. We don’t think you need to worry about merchant accounts, hosting, and other technology-related issues with individual websites. The ROI doesn’t make sense. Instead, we think you need to feed off of the traffic from other local merchants much like a shopping mall, and have as little headaches as possible from selling on-line. ”

G-Pie Media, LLC, a locally owned company, has spent the last 16 months creating the e-commerce platform. “It should be a win-win-win-win situation. Customers can now shop at local brick and mortar stores from the comfort of their home whenever they like. Local merchants should see an increase in sales with their new ‘open hours’, while also benefit from the efficiency of selling on-line. Local governments should see an increase in sales tax revenue, and hopefully an increase in the number of new businesses that transition from at-home businesses to brick and mortar businesses. And hopefully our beta testing in the BenGil area and a few other local communities will show positive traction and allow us to launch nationally while keeping our headquarters in Gillespie.”

G-Pie Media was initially founded in 2010, and incorporated in 2011. While it’s based out of Gillespie, two cofounders, the CTO and the head of marketing, currently reside in New York. This is the first of two SaaS applications they plan to launch in 2012. “The CTO has worked at two technology startups during the last two years, Bookish and Teledoc. He’s been programming since he’s been 12 years old, and even created a social network for fitness enthusiasts by himself. Our other founder currently works for a major marketing company based in NYC. We’ve been communicating ever day on-line for the last 16 months. It’s allowed us to keep our current jobs, but still pursue our own projects. We just recently submitted our concept for both SaaS applications to TechStars, a technology incubator in Boulder, Co. The e-commerce platform is just phase 1 of this project. Eventually, we’ll also incorporate a point-of-sale system into it so it’s a complete retail ecosystem. Merchants will be able to manage their on-line store and their brick and mortar store from the same computer screen with just a few clicks of the mouse. Cash registers will become obsolete, and a new hybrid business model will be created.”

Local business owners can see a preview of the site December 8^th from 6-7 PM at Ageless. T. J will walk local business owners through the site, explain its benefits, start signing businesses up for the official launch in January, and answer any questions business owners or residents may have.

A demo of the unfinished site can be seen at http://www.softdemonew.info/

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Featured

Gillespie man injured in DUI accident

Published

10 years ago

October 16, 2015

BenGil Staff

Genisio's Ford Mustang in the City of Gillespie's impound lot Tuesday morning.

A Gillespie man was taken to a local hospital after suffering injuries following a single-vehicle accident that occurred Sunday morning, October 11, after he drove off the roadway and into a deep ditch near the intersection of Route 16 and Charles Street in Gillespie.

Gillespie Police Chief Jared DePoppe reported that the police department was dispatched to the scene of the accident shortly before 3 a.m. Officers arrived to find Jonathan Genisio, 29, of Gillespie as the driver and only occupant inside the Ford Mustang vehicle.

Genisio was arrested, but give a notice to appear in court so he could seek medical treatment. He was charged with six different counts in addition to having his vehicle impounded. His charges include driving under the influence of alcohol, no insurance, improper lane usage, failure to reduce speed to avoid an accident, failure to notify SOS of an address change and failure to wear a seat belt.

At the time of publication on Thursday evening, the vehicle was recovered from impound and Genisio was discharged from the hospital. The extent of his injuries was unable to be released by medical personnel.

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Community News

Gillespie council discusses budget and meeting process

Published

10 years ago

August 1, 2015

BenGil Staff

Treasurer Dan Fisher (right) addresses the council.

The treasurer for the City of Gillespie had a lot to say about how city officials handle their subcommittees and how city funds are spent during the city’s committee meeting held Monday evening, July 27.

Dan Fisher, the elected treasurer for Gillespie, spoke to the council for over 30 minutes about how bills are paid and more importantly, how purchases are appropriated for and planned. During the city’s board meeting held earlier this month, Fisher suggested the council move their meeting dates to coincide with how the bills are paid.

He explained that many council members bring up issues or have questions about certain bills during the council meetings, but the questions are left to be answered by the city clerk who isn’t present at the board meetings. In addition to dragging out the meetings, Fisher said the questions should be taken care of before the meeting is held.

“We need to have a standardized process on how we buy things,” Fisher told the council Monday evening. “We need to spend more time on appropriating.”

We need to have a standardized process on how we buy things

Fisher distributed a “Budget Basics” packet to board members during the committee meeting held Monday and said the council should consider implementing a purchase order system to account for all purchases. “That way when the bills come in, we can match the form up with it and everyone knows what the purchase was for and what account it comes out of,” he clarified.

Council members agreed with what Fisher had to say to them. “We need to spend a lot of time when do our appropriation and it’s going to take a lot of time from everyone, including myself,” he continued. “We need to find a way to be collective in how we do things.”

Fisher closed by adding that the council also takes too long at their regular city council meetings, which are held on the second Monday of each month. Speaking of the city’s July meeting that lasted nearly 3 hours, Fisher said the council needs to be much more “business-like”.

“We take too long at our meetings,” he closed. “It’s been proven that people lose focus after 90 minutes and there is no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get a meeting done in 1 hour and 15 minutes.”

City clerk Frances Smith spoke up after Fisher referred to the council’s last meeting. She prefaced her statement by saying she didn’t intend to saying anything, but continued by saying that the council’s July 13^th meeting took her three days to transcribe. “It makes the clerk’s job hard – whoever it is,” she said. “There is a lot of side conversations and it’s very hard to hear on the tape.”

Ash Street Project

Alderman Steve Kluthe informed the board that he received the bid specifications back for the Ash Street Project which allows the council to advertise the specs to get an idea how much drainage project will cost.

Kluthe said the bid specifications cover everything including equal opportunity employer and prevailing wage information, but said the project could probably be handled by a local contractor. The project includes installing a culvert that will transfer the water to Cherry Street.

The council hopes the completed project will then alleviate the water that currently gets backed up north of Ash Street. “They are going to put a culvert underneath Ash Street to the north and grade the ground on the north side so the water flows to the culvert and down to the south end where there is a storm drain,” Kluthe explained.

TIF District

We should stretch the money out and begin to reinvest the money into community development

Fisher informed the council that the tax bills for the TIF district went out and the city can expect to receive close to $60,000. He reminded the council that even though the city made a big payment to United Community Bank last year in excess of $90,000, there will still be a payment made to UCB for their portion paid into the TIF until the TIF expires, which Fisher said is 12-14 more years.

After the city pays UCB, Fisher said the council can expect to still have somewhere north of $40,000 remaining each year. “I would like us to start to look at other projects that meet the TIF criteria that we could spend $20-$30,000 per year,” Fisher explained. “Long-range projects – projects that could last 10-12 years. We should stretch the money out and begin to reinvest the money into community development.”

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