A Conversation With ... Theresa Pollard

We’re a marketing and advertising group … started in 1994. I was a founding member. We started Springfield’s Best when the big-box stores started coming to town in the early 1990s. I co-owned a business at that time, All-Service Plumbing, Heating & Cooling, and we had a large marketing and advertising budget, but of course, the big-box stores have huge budgets. We decided that we would start a marketing and advertising group with one member per category of business. Members pay annual dues of $3,000. And lots of our members’ (businesses) are family-owned.

What marketing opportunities and activities are provided for members?

We do a lot. We have a partnership with Springfield Cardinals, and the members get to go down on the field in the pregame show, and they do a sponsorship of Springfield’s Best Player of the Game or Fan of the Game. People like to do that. Each company gets a radio ad, and they can say whatever they want to about their business, and it’s tagged with “A proud member of Springfield’s Best.” We do back covers on the Business Journal, and we’re excited about an insert that we’re going to do two times next year. We co-sponsor shows at Little Theatre and Juanita K. Hammons Hall. … We sponsored “Ring of Fire” in the fall. We use the Springfield’s Best logo to bring everybody together, and every time any company uses that logo in print, or uses the tagline, “A proud member of Springfield’s Best,” it helps all the other members of Springfield’s Best. That’s the cooperative part of it.

Why did you decide to become the executive director of Springfield’s Best in January 2006?

They were down to 47 members. Being a co-founder of Springfield’s Best, I had lived out of the country for awhile – I married a guy from England and lived (there) for a couple of years – and came back to town and noticed that the membership was dwindling, and just kind of had a little bit of my heart in it. I have part-time help off and on … I’m a one-man band most of the time, and I’m a workaholic.

Now, Springfield’s Best has 103 members. How were you able to grow the organization?

I think I just went back to the roots of what we started it (to be) about. In our heyday, in the late 1990s, we were more than 100 members. Things happened, and executive directors changed – not that they weren’t probably all good executive directors – but they were trying to treat it like a networking-only group, or a breakfast club, and we’re not. We’re marketing and advertising. We do networking, we have a mixer once a month, and we have luncheons, but the No. 1 thing is not networking.

Do Springfield’s Best companies have to be locally owned?

Yes, unless we’ve exhausted all the options. When it comes down to it, the board of directors makes the decision. But if we’ve exhausted everyone in a category and (one) is (based in another city), they might consider letting them join.

What kind of growth do you hope to see for Springfield’s Best?

When we first started, (we thought) that we could have a business for every category in the phone book. Now, once you get more than 100 members, it’s more nominations – someone might know someone in business that they think would be a good fit. We have an open-category list that changes all the time. If somebody’s nominated (for membership) and we don’t have their category, the board will vote on the company and the category.

Are there any new member services on the horizon?

We are going to do some TV advertising on channel 3, 10 and KSFX … individual ads for the companies that want to participate.

Tell us about your family and what you do for fun.

I’m married to Nick, and I have a son, Garen, and daughter-in-law Abbi, and grandson, Brady, who’s 2. They all live here. Nick’s a (registered nurse), but he owns a flower shop in Republic, Stems & More Gifts and Home Décor. He actually bought the store from Karl (Jones, owner of Linda’s Flowers). It was Linda’s in Republic. Nick’s British, and he’s on the radio a lot. We donated a lot of stuffed animals and they’re going to take them to hospitals over the Christmas holidays and give them to the kids in the children’s ward. I like to travel.

Interview by Features Editor Maria Hoover. You can e-mail her with suggestions for future installments of this feature at mhoover@sbj.net.[[In-content Ad]]