Year of growth amid turmoil of 2020

We started 2020 with bushfires and floods then quickly moved into global pandemic mode but for the Chamber of Commerce, it has been a year of growth. 

We started the year with under 150 members and now have over 200 with more coming on every week. 

One of our key successes this year is that every face-to-face event we have held has been sold out. Even our first event after lockdown was oversubscribed. 

In November we held the 2nd Logan Business Expo (LExpo) with Bruce Uhlhorn, International Chairman of Radio Lollipop speaking at the breakfast followed by over 30 businesses sharing their products and services during the day. 

In 2019, Jackie Thompson, one of our committee members, challenged us to write and publish a book based on the experience we have in the committee and the chamber as a whole. After many months of work, Business 2 Business was published towards the end of 2019 and has been for sale from the website and at Chamber functions.  

As far as we can determine, we are the only Chamber of Commerce in Australia who have published their own book. 

When COVID hit, the Chamber pivoted to online meetings. Having published our book meant we had a ready-to-go agenda for online webinars. We booked them in weekly and ran through every chapter of the book. 

We also helped many businesses apply for the State Governments Adaption grants with a result that 617 Logan businesses received a combined total of $5.6 million to cope with the COVID restrictions.

We are now working with GO1 to promote the free business training supplied by local business Go1 and the Queensland Government through SkillsHub. We will be launching a new webinar series soon featuring content from these amazing online courses. 

This year we continued to sponsor the Griffith University Entrepreneur Series functions. These monthly functions also moved online and regularly have over 100 registrations with a total over 350 attendees for the Chamber year. 

We also implemented the first Logan Chamber of Commerce university scholarship. This will pay for a student to attend Griffith University Business course with an emphasis on Business Innovation.

The future for the Logan Chamber of Commerce looks bright with many new ideas and a strong committee to takes these ideas forward. As well as another LExpo, the Business Distinction Awards and Golf Day, we are exploring specialised industry events and mastermind groups for the professional services, media, automotive, medical community services, engineering and hospitality sectors. If you are interested in any of these industries, keep an eye out for an invitation from one of Industry Chamber Champions. 

We are your Chamber of Commerce and we are honoured to serve such a thriving business community.