Bruce Heidlauf, owner of Mill Race Cyclery in Geneva, is also a longstanding member of the Geneva Chamber of Commerce who liked what he saw Wednesday night at the first-ever Tri-City Business Expo at Eagle Brook Country Club in Geneva.
Members of the Geneva, Batavia and St. Charles chambers of commerce joined together for the event.
“I think this is a good idea,” Heidlauf said as he looked at a series of booths at the expo. “I love when the three towns get together because, honestly, I do as much business in St. Charles and Batavia as I do in Geneva and I like the chance to meet with other businesses.”
The event featured 45 tables with 15 representing each community involved in the event.
Before opening the 90-minute expo to the public, the joint chamber group offered a members-only networking open house from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m.
Margaret Perreault, president and CEO of the Batavia Chamber of Commerce, spoke a day before the expo and said she and the members of the other chambers involved “are really excited about hosting the event.”
“This is the first time that we’ve done one with Geneva and St. Charles,” she said. “I’ve heard from many businesses how they love expos like this, and they want to get their businesses in front of other businesses and people in the community, so we thought we’d join forces and have an area-wide expo. This benefits a lot of residents and their businesses.”
Perreault said the joint effort was made possible after the country club offered up the site “as they were also looking to get more people in their doors.”
“They reached out to us and said, ‘Let’s do an event together,’ and the events manager at Eagle Brook said she had seen an event like this working well at other golf clubs and thought this would be a great opportunity,” Perreault said. “The club gets the benefit of our bringing people in as well as showing off their food, while we get the benefit of having a venue where we can showcase our member businesses.”
Paula Schmidt, president of the Geneva Chamber of Commerce, called the expo “exciting for our service industries to have a thing like this.”
“This is more of a local event and so it’s very nice to give them an outlet of some kind to be able to be here and network with each other,” she said.
A wide range of businesses were involved in the expo, organizers said.
Susi Brucato, who co-owns a candle-making business in Geneva named INLURO with her husband Rob, was one of the many retailers on hand and said they both appreciated the opportunity to showcase their business.
“We’ve been chamber members since we opened our doors and that’s been over seven years,” she said. “It’s great to see all the chamber members working together. We’re actually members of all three but Geneva is the one we’ve been members with the longest. The chamber events where they all work together are, to me, the best.”
Matt Steuart, who works at the St. Charles home care service for the elderly Home Instead, was also enjoying the expo and said the cooperative effort was something “I’m loving.”
“I was born in the Tri-City area so everything about this area and getting more people together, it does everyone a great deal of good,” he said. “You have to ask: why didn’t we think of this sooner? What took so long?”
David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.