The Crossroads Chamber of Commerce hosted its annual Cover All Your Bases Business Expo on Tuesday at the U.S. Steel Yard in Gary. It is the third year that the expo has been held at the home of the Gary SouthShore Railcats.
“The Railcats have been super generous with us the last three years, " said Deann Patena, Crossroads Chamber president and CEO. “We work super closely with them. Brian Lyter, President of Salvi Sports Enterprise, is a board of directors member for the chamber. We're just super fortunate to have this beautiful venue that we can use.”
Franciscan Health was the main sponsor for the event which had three parts and 55 vendors. Attendees got to walk the concourse and meet all of the vendors.
“We are very active members of the chamber, and we have made a lot of connections,” said Michelle Hurst, development associate for Franciscan Health Foundation. “A lot of the Chamber members support our programs for the foundation and medical care at our facilities throughout Northwest Indiana.”
The expo provided participants with the opportunity to network with other businesses and members of the community. Networking is very important to organizations like Franciscan Health.
“It's very important as far as the foundation is concerned, we're the philanthropic arm of the hospital, " said Hurst. We count on donations and gifts from community members but also many supportive businesses.”
The connections made are also crucial for businesses like Centier Bank who rely on networking to make connections that help the bank. The expo helps Centier and other businesses to meet each other so they have those connections in the community.
“Crossroads has been great, and they've been a great partner to us," said Marcus Meyer, branch manager for Centier’s downtown Crown Point branch. “They've gotten us a lot of exposure in the community for us to be able to market ourselves and show what we can do for the community.”
In addition to networking rounds, the event was kicked off with a lunch sponsored by last year's sponsor, ProvenIT. About 165 people attended the lunch on the field which consisted of baseball food such as hot dogs and Italian sausage.
“The chamber here is really great at throwing these great events and Proven It was a big sponsor of White Sox, " said Brian Cook, account manager for ProvenIt. We are a big sports company. We love the interaction here and getting to be at the US Steel Yard. It is a great event to be able to be a part of. When they asked us if we wanted to do the sponsorship for this, we jumped at the option to do that.”
For vendors who are involved with the chamber, the process of getting a booth was painless.
“We're a partner sponsor with the chamber," said Matt Scheuer, Purdue Federal Credit Union VP of business development for Northwest Indiana. “We do a lot of events with the chamber. They're great to work with, so we actually had a booth because of that. Getting a booth here was pretty easy.”
The expo concludes with a round of night networking called Business After Hours.
“We just like to support our members and allow them to let everybody know what they have to offer”. said Patena.
For more information about the Crossroads Chamber of Commerce, visit www.crossroadschamber.org.