Roll out the barrel, the SVA decides

Posted Jan 19, 2012 By John Curry

EMC News - Rain barrels for sale. Purchase yours and help out the Stittsville Village Association (SVA) at the same time.

The SVA has decided to sell rain barrels as a fundraising initiative, making $10 on each barrel that sells for $55. Sales will be handled online with purchasers able to pick their barrel up at a truckload distribution spot, probably sometime in early May. Details are still to be worked out but the SVA executive decided to go ahead with the idea which was suggested by SVA secretary Tanya Hein at a meeting on Thursday, Jan. 12.

The SVA will have to provide volunteers on the day of the pickup and will also be responsible for spreading the word about the sale of the rain barrels in the community.

In doing this they are going to get help from Sobeys in Stittsville whose owner Tim LaPlante sits on the SVA executive.

He offered the use of the Sobeys parking lot at the spot for the truckload distribution of the rain barrels. He also offered to distribute flyers about the rain barrel sale to Sobeys customers and even wants to have a sample rain barrel to display at the store sometime in March and April to publicize the sale and to allow people to see what they will be getting for the purchase.

"We could probably sell a bunch of these," Mr. LaPlante said, suggesting that it may be possible to sell more than 500 such rain barrels with proper promotion.

Selling a whole truckload of 300 rain barrels would generate $3,000 for the SVA.

The SVA would have the cost of printing about 10,000 flyers for distribution at the store and perhaps through other means such as using the services of the Stittsville Youth Association for handing them out. It was decided that the truckload distribution should happen in the first or second week of May.

john.curry@metroland.com