Hello friends.
After the time intensive gift guide posts before Christmas, I think I needed some major recuperating from working on the blog that week so hard! With all the things I juggle for Positively Apex to grow, this can become last priority. I would love to have guest bloggers that want to write about something Apex or community related! Let me know if you want to be involved.
Even though we are more than a month into 2023 already, I feel it’s imperative to recap and celebrate what we did and built in 2022 with our expanded platform.
First the stats of 2022:
We published and mailed 10 issues of the new Friendship magazine, which now goes to about 50 neighborhoods in the West Apex, Friendship, and New Hill area! Within those issues, we showcased 64 different residents in the Apex community, 32 Apex area pets, 5 Apex homes/ home projects, 20 Apex area businesses, and 5 local non-profits! Also, 8 of our articles were written by kids, our Junior Writers, or our Interns.
We planned and hosted 17(!) events, both large and small. From small networking meetups to craft workshops to ladies’ nights to community festivals, our events are all different and ALWAYS OPEN TO THE PUBLIC! Check out some highlight pictures below.
We helped about 45 businesses grow their Apex footprint, brand awareness, word of mouth, and relationships through our program in 2022. We have a passion for helping small businesses grow, and helping them with a creative and unique solution to engage in THEIR COMMUNITY!
We grew our social media presence through Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. We hope you will follow us there!
We have so many plans and ideas for 2023. We’d love to hear yours!
Now for a more specific month by month recap!
MARCH 2022:
Our first issue of the Friendship magazine featured then Apex Chamber President, Shannon Flaherty and son Trey. We hosted a business fair, launch party, and ribbon cutting on a beautiful day at The Depot in Downtown Apex, which house the Apex Chamber and the Town of Apex Economic Development office. We had about 80 attend!
APRIL 2022:
Our second issue of the Friendship magazine featured Mayor Jacques Gilbert and family! We also were the highlighted business and sponsor of the Holly Springs Small Business Networking group. Even though we focus our efforts in Apex, we are for the surrounding communities as well!
MAY 2022:
Our next issue featured the adorable Nebolisa family, who owns one of our partner businesses, Kwench Juice Cafe (see them in our Business Directory!). Stay tuned for an update about this family and the business!
JUNE 2022:
This month, we featured recent achievements of local superstar in gaming, Heather Chandler. Heather and her husband also own one of our partner businesses, Whole Brain Escape! We also had our first B2B partner lunch for our local business partners. Finally, we celebrated the end of the school year with a fun open house-style event at Kwench!
JULY 2022:
In July, it was our honor to feature a family and new local non-profit, Be the Rainbow Foundation. We loved telling the story of how the Reynolds family turned their personal experience with childhood cancer to a wonderful organization! We also hosted a night of escape room fun at Whole Brain Escape with ice cream from Fresh Local Ice Cream!
AUGUST 2022:
At the end of the Summer, we featured another resident business partner, the Lammons of Peak City Coffee! Did you know we have a specialty coffee roaster right here in Apex? Then we took over the Apex Chamber after hours networking with our resident business partner, Amy Williams with State Farm! It was a great night of cocktails, food, prizes, and networking!
SEPTEMBER 2022:
We were happy to highlight the Campbell family on this cover, and share about our resident business partner, Marlow Campbell Insurance Group. We also started a new casual networking meetup called Pot Luck Networking, and hosted a Wine & Wellness Ladies afternoon at Barre3 in Cary, presented by our partners at The Ragan Realty Team and Donna Pruitt Mortgage.
OCTOBER 2022:
This was a first! Our first Bird cover model! Simon the Parrot, who owns the Powell family, was our star this issue. SHE IS a pretty bird. October also brought our biggest event EVER throughout any of our past endeavors even. We had the Pawsitively Spooky Pet Fest and Run, with a fundraiser 5K/ Fun Run, Dog Costume Contest, Trick or Treating, Vendors, and Food Trucks. Presented by our partners Rize Salon and Infrared, Peak City Veterinary, and K9 Resorts of Apex, we had special guest judge Mayor Jacques Gilbert! It was a great Fall day, and we look forward to our annual event- this year will be October 21st so mark your calendars and prep your dog costumes!
NOVEMBER 2022:
In November, we loved the kitchen remodel that the Ragan family had done so much, we featured it on the cover! We love seeing what people do for home improvement projects. We also had another of our annual signature events- our Holiday Kids Craft Fair! This year was presented by partner Green Home Solutions and held at the Halle Cultural Arts Center. (This year’s event will still be at the Halle but be on BOTH floors due to popular demand. Mark your calendars for Nov 18th.) In addition we hosted a community night painting at Wine & Design Apex.
DECEMBER 2022:
We ended 2022 with super talented young dancer, Jolynn E. We have followed this young lady’s dance journey through the last few years, and just love seeing how much she’s accomplished. Our last public event of the year was a random idea I had one day, but it WORKED! We held our first food tasting of a particular food type. This one was at Chicken Salad Chick in Cary. A group of official tasters came out and tasted 12 kinds of chicken salad to determine the community favorite! Yum yum. We ended the year of events with our annual partner holiday lunch, where many of our business partners came out so we could appreciate them!
We think it was a pretty great year!
LOOKING FORWARD TO 2023 AND BEYOND…
This year we are excited to feature more stories in the magazines, host many events, and grow even more businesses! Some events we are working on are a Spring business expo, vendor fair, and food truck event, a talent show, our signature annual events as mentioned above, and a monthly happy hour celebrating each magazine issue launch on the 7th of each month. We also want to start a non-profit, hire more staff, work with more business partners, expand our services, and involve more of you from the community!
CHEERS!