Nutley Talk: The President of Nutley Chamber of Commerce

Nutley Kia is the member of The Nutley Chamber of Commerce. We’ve strived to boost businesses in Nutley and helped host many activities to bring local people together and build the community. Dan Leon is out current President of the Chamber of Commerce. We are happy to have him here telling us a little bit more about himself and the mission of The Nutley Chamber of Commerce. Let’s take a look!

Can you briefly introduce yourself? Your name, your job, where are you from, and what is your favorite place to go in Nutley?

I’m Dan Leon, currently work as a mortgage loan officer at North Jersey Federal Credit Union. I’m active with our Nutley community. Currently, I live in Lyndhurst, lived in Nutley for 18 years, which is a town that I love, and my daughter goes to school at Nutley High. I have many favorite places to go, all of the restaurants are awesome: Luna, Franklin Steakhouse, Old Canal Inn and Brooke Tavern. Also enjoy all of the parks that are located throughout the township.

 

What is the mission of Nutley Chamber of Commerce? What goals do you want to achieve? Why did you join?

Our mission at the Chamber of Commerce is to help provide our business owners with information and education that are beneficial to help them grow and make money. For example, we have many events and we are now starting to do seminars to help them network and promote their brand. We have a strong working relationship with our Mayor and Commissioners, this has been helpful due to the new direction our township needs to go to attract more residents that live outside our town, within a 5-mile radius. In the end, hopefully we can improve each business owner’s knowledge of promoting themselves and that will help drive more people into their establishments.

 

As the President of Nutley Chamber of Commerce, what are your main responsibilities?

My main responsibilities as the President is to make sure our members understand our mission and maintain open communication with them and the decision makers of the community. We are fortunate to have Barbara Chiarieri as our officer manager. She has been doing a great job managing the organization and our activities, and she has brought marketing and networking experience to our group.

 

What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced in Nutley Chamber of Commerce? How do you manage it?

Our biggest challenge has been the loss of Hoffman Roche Pharmaceutical; they were a major business in our community. When their site closed it left a very big hole in our business structure. We are currently working closely with our Mayor and Commissioners to try and help solve this issue by trying to manage our location and take advantage of our proximity to 2 major highways that surround us: route 3 and the Garden State Parkway. Within our organization our biggest obstacle we have found is the participation of our business owners attending events that will help them promote themselves. We are trying to add different workshops, for example we had a seminar that discussed social media, unfortunately not many participated, but we have seen an increase in participation at our events over the last few months and we have had a number of small business owners want to help participate in different committees in our organization.

 

We’ve noticed that Nutley Chamber of Commerce has created some campaigns, such as Nutley Scavenger Hunt and “Love Nutley, Shop Nutley.” What is the purpose of those activities? What does Nutley Chamber of Commerce want to bring to Nutley residents?

The main purpose of our events is to promote our small business community. Since we’ve recently learned through our Nutley Survey that 61% of our residents don’t shop in Nutley. Our goal is to add more value for our members for the purpose of promotion and brand awareness within our surrounding area.

 

If you can only use three words to describe Nutley, what are they?

Three characteristics that describe Nutley for me would be 1) Family Oriented due to the number of families that live here, the beautiful parks we have throughout the town, sports programs we have for our children and we are a town of activities. 2) Small Town Atmosphere because everyone knows each other and the number of people that were born here, still live in town 3) Transition since we are a town that needs to change to better suit the needs of its residents.

 

Any final words or thoughts you’d like to add?

Speaking on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce, we are excited about the future of our town and business community based on new information we received from our Nutley Survey. Our members are all strong character people who want to be successful, look forward watching them grow and prosper. But we know we need to continue to work hard working together to ensure the successes of our future as a successful business district.

 

Check out Nutley Chamber of Commerce‘s website for more upcoming events in Nutley. Share this interview with your friends and family!

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