General News
11 March, 2025
First Village Business expo set to support locals
The first Village Business Expo in the Central Goldfields Shire is set to bring partnership and collaboration to hundreds of local businesses.
On May 9, the Maryborough Harness Racing Club will be hosting regional businesses of all shapes and sizes for a local networking event.
The day is packed full of mentoring, business speed dating, a local business exhibition hall, and opportunities to engage with local, state, and federal government leaders.
While the itinerary is expansive the word of the day seems to be partnership with Village Business alongside local business association Committee for Maryborough collaborating on the event.
Although this is the first year the expo will be held in the Central Goldfields Shire Luz Restrepo OAM, founder of Village Business, said the event will be annual moving through the shire’s townships year on year.
“Part of the idea is to break the boundaries because sometimes businesses do business in just the same area, and there are opportunities if I were to talk with businesses from other towns, other shires, and found opportunities to connect,” she said.
“To keep increasing the network is the only way.”
The goal of the event is for business owners to build their network and make connections that are mutually beneficial. It’s a concept embodied by the organising group’s own partnership.
“We are connecting. [Committee for Maryborough] knows about the area, [they] know open opportunities, I know how to develop an event where connections come,” Ms Restrepo said.
Kerrie Dowling, Committee for Maryborough secretary, said the business association needed to diversify and target small and micro business after struggling to keep members since COVID. Alone, however, they didn’t have the resources.
“What we probably lack Luz just fits the hole and makes it happen,” she said.
Ms Restrepo is contributing her marketing and event expertise to Ms Dowling’s local knowledge and the association’s presence, making them a seemingly perfect match.
“It is incredible how the Committee for Maryborough has a strong voice, it just needs to be a little more persistent and keep going,” Ms Restrepo said.
Ms Restrepo believes micro and small businesses should work together in order to thrive.
As of June 2024, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) found that 97.2 percent of businesses in Australia were small businesses (fewer than 20 employees).
“There is a lack of knowledge about them, there is a lack of support about them. And, because they are busy in the business, they don’t have time to connect and learn how to drive and grow,” Ms Restrepo said.
In some ways Village Business follows in the footsteps of SisterWorks, which Ms Restrepo also founded, which helps migrant women through entrepreneurship and connection.
Considering why she tends toward helping others through her professional life ,Ms Restrepo explained how going from a “privileged” life in Colombia to not knowing English and feeling like a nobody in Australia shaped her.
“When you come here seeking political asylum with no language, no connection, no money … you feel immediately this kind of discrimination, I don’t need your pity or sorry I just need the opportunity to show who we are. Perhaps then I become an advocate of just people who need opportunity, it doesn’t matter which kind of label you have,” she said.
It’s this philosophy of seeing people eye to eye that shapes the expo, it’s all about partnerships and building a network with your peers no matter your business size.
“This is probably what we need in society. We need to stop seeing people down or up, but seeing how people compliment,” Ms Restrepo said.
Once the business expo is over for the year in May, Committee for Maryborough hope to maintain that network in the community.
“We’re wanting to grow our membership base that in turn allows us to put on more events and do things with local businesses,” Ms Dowling said.
Ms Restrepo said this expo is just the beginning, people just need to come, with more information on prices and what’s on offer available on the Committee for Maryborough’s Facebook page.
“It doesn’t matter your business, your size, your shire, your town, it should be in one of the business expos,” she said.