The four days turned out to be a fantastic few days of economic stimulus and demonstrated fantastic community spirit.

We have always known we live in a great village and this has just reassured us even further.

The shopping days are a big part of the CBCPA calendar and we are pleased to announce that a total spend of up to $60,000 was generated.

This is a three fold increase in what the Christmas shopping events have been able to do in the last few years.

Can't help but think this is a great success, and I couldn't be happier for the participating businesses.

There were up to 40 individual businesses participating with some trialing new business hours.

Obviously, we had our challenges with COVID, but we planned out how to best serve the participating businesses and this was achieved by promoting shopping local.

Cabonne Council were instrumental in their generosity in donating $600 worth of prizes as well as their skills in promotion, design and printing.

Orange 360 also ran radio ads in Orange and surrounding areas promoting the idea of Christmas shopping locally in all villages in the area, we definitely benefited from this as I personally spoke with people from as far as Young, Forbes and and look forward to working closely with these two entities as well as other towns in our district.

We are pleased to highlight the efforts of the CBCPA sub committee who led this, Jenni Middleton and Michelle Porter were awesome.

They were always positive, worked hard, and even called upon some businesses up to five times to encourage them to be involved.

Local businesses also put their hands in their pockets to donate vouchers for prizes, up to $1200 worth, as well as host photographers and bands.

A total of 29 vouchers were raffled and drawn, to again stimulate shopping locally.

We as a committee, are pleased with the result, but we really need to find out what businesses thought of the shopping days.

We look forward to hearing your thoughts.