08/11/2026
We would personally like to thank everyone who participated, attended, volunteered, or helped in anyway at the Bloomville Block party. It certainly helps our town when we work together to make Bloomville a better place. Bloomville is a small community with only a few businesses but with determination and volunteerism we are able to accomplish a lot. We also work with the Block party committee and help organize and arrange things for the Block party. We know that we only get so many sales from within our community and we know that if we can bring people from outside of the community, there is a good opportunity to increase our sales and also possibly gain a brand new customer that returns frequently for years to come.
That’s not saying it’s easy for the small businesses. Being a small business, we understand the struggles and difficulties. The very first year we opened, in 2008, there was an employee that stole from me. It almost put us out of business. I had to sell personal belongings to keep my business from going under. But when we started, our thought was, what can we do for the community to help better the community and make it easier for the people of the community. So we set our hours based on that. We opened at 6 in the morning and closed at 12 at night. We are open 365 days a year. The only time we close is for power outages. We adapted our products to accommodate the peoples needs and change as it’s needed. This has come with faliures and lessons learned. One of the most memorable moments was when we first opened up I had a girl that came up to the gas pump on a stormy snowy morning and she said she was only going to get five dollars worth of gas and she said she was going to get the rest in Tiffin because it was cheaper. I told her that’s what we’re here for, to make sure that you can get to work and take care of your needs. I really had a good conversation with her and was very happy to help her get through her daily struggles of life. We too have daily struggles with business, but we take it on as a challenge, to say OK what’s the problem and what can we do to solve it?
We also look at what’s going on around our community and how it affects my sales. We have reviewed our sales for the last month and this Saturday was the best Saturday that we’ve had in the last five weeks.
We are concerned with every small business in town. We want to see them be successful, because those businesses also bring people to town and that helps our business. It is important for every small business to be successful and grow. The more things we can offer people the more people will come to our Village. We were once called at 2:30 in the morning for someone traveling from Columbus to Toledo who needed gas and we were the closest station. We did not hesitate to open up and furnished gas to help them on their way. That is what we need to do as a small business to make this Village successful.
And one last thing I wanted to add was how much I have gotten back from this community and my employees. As most people know, I had a severe health scare and the outpouring of support, care,and help that I received from my outstanding employees and the community was overwhelming. It seems the more we invest in our community the more we receive from our community.
~Jim Price
