Website will help put a face to Hastings independent traders

The Hastings Flyer has been running for the last four years as a comprehensive music listings and review website – but with the next ‘proper’ gig now many months away the site has shifted the focus of its lens to the many small businesses that give Hastings and St Leonards so much character.

The project has also uncovered the fact that around 40% of local small businesses have no website, and many have little or no visible online presence at all on search engines or social media platforms.

Photographer Sara-Louise Bowrey caught the public’s attention last summer with her series of portraits of musicians caught in lockdown. This time she is trying to capture an increasingly rare smile from the business owners who run the towns shops, hairdressers, pubs and restaurants as they struggle to survive the extended economic impact of a lockdown that seems to have no clear end in sight.

Website owner, John Bownas, who is also the manager of Love Hastings – the town centre Business Improvement District, said: “Myself and Sara really felt it was important and worthwhile to let people look into the eyes of the hundreds of people whose passion and determination make Hastings such a vibrant place to shop.

“The ‘flyer’ has been a hobby of ours since we moved to Hastings. It’s built up a loyal following and has great visibility, so it felt like the best way of putting some spare time into helping independent businesses right across the borough.

“Initially this was just a photography project, but it has quickly turned into a mission to make sure every business in Hastings has an online presence - and a human face. So many business still haven’t covered the basics of ensuring they have claimed their ‘space’ on Google and Facebook – even though it’s free and easy to do.

“We kicked off with the Old Town as we’d been approached by several traders in the area to do something like this, but we’ll soon be expanding to allow any Hastings business to get onto the website. It’s not going to happen overnight, as there are around 180 independent businesses in the Old Town alone, and about the same just in Central St Leonards. And once you add in the Town Centre, Ore, Silverhill and all the other small pockets the number is huge – well over 700. But what’s so important to remember right now is that without these businesses getting every little bit of support we may lose a significant percentage of them.

“All the headlines about business closures are on the big high street names right now – but unless the government finds a way of injecting some more significant cash into the small business sector I’m hugely concerned that lots of established traders will have to throw in the towel over the next few months. In the meantime, anything we can all do to help them stay solvent is critical – not just to their livelihoods, but to the character and future of the town.”

The project is still in its early days, but the Old Town site can be found at: hastingsflyer.com/hastings-old-town-businesses/ and other areas will be added shortly.

See also: Hastings man guilty of indecent exposure and other local court stories