Editorial: Whanganui & Partners miss mark during Whanganui business story of the month

Economic development agency Whanganui & Partners is based at the Innovation Quarter. Photo / Bevan Conley

Did Whanganui & Partners seriously think they were on to something?

The city's lack of a locally based cobbler hit national headlines last month when councillor Helen Craig put the call out after the closure of the city's only dedicated shoe repairer.

But throughout the Whanganui Chronicle's coverage and on TVNZ's Seven Sharp it came to public attention that local store Posh Comfort had an arrangement with a Feilding cobbler to fix Whanganui shoes - and not just those bought from the store.

Footloose Shoes said it can also send shoes purchased from the store back to the manufacturer for repair.

Sure, it's not a locally based dedicated cobbler but it's still something to plug the gap in the meantime.

Posh Comfort may get a cut - which would be something for the local economy - but even if it is just a free and friendly service, it gets people into the store.

That's something Whanganui retailers desperately need and surely what Whanganui & Partners are meant to help achieve with the more than $2 million a year it gets from ratepayers.

So, where was our economic development agency in this story?

While there have been several social media posts since it broke profiling local businesses, there is nothing promoting Posh Comfort's local solution to what was the biggest Whanganui business story of the month.

Now, almost five weeks later Whanganui & Partners has posted on Facebook: "Cobbler to the rescue!" and "We have been offered a solution!"

The solution they are promoting? Whanganui people can courier their shoes to Masterton to be fixed and they'll be couriered back.

That's not a solution. That's the postal service.

It's quite staggering for the organisation to promote Wairarapa business and hold it up as some kind of solution when a similar service involving a local business is known of and has been widely reported on.

A shout out to Posh Comfort wouldn't have hurt.

Hearts may have been in the right place with this post but heads were not and it's really not good enough for an economic development agency that Whanganui people, and businesses, pay a lot for money for.