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The Mercurial

What does your business do?
The Mercurial is a wonderful, worldly (web) magazine rooted in Greater Danbury, Connecticut (TheMercurial.com) and an art gallery located at 11 Library Place in Danbury, Connecticut. The magazine covers news and culture in and around New England, investigates the bad stuff and celebrates the good stuff. The gallery showcases local emerging artists and musicians.

The Mercurial is devoted to the cultural (and economic) revitalization of the Greater Danbury area and is doing its part by informing the public via the magazine and by creating a cultural hub at the gallery.

What would the grant enable you to do that you can't now?
This grant would incentivize the ad manager position I'm offering at The Mercurial. Right now I have no revenue to offer an ad manager aside from commission on sales. Offering a small base pay would make a huge difference in attracting someone towards the position.

If Idea Cafe's Grant helps your biz reach greater success, how will you "pay it forward" to help others in some way?
Great question. The Mercurial's greatest resource for businesses is our advertising opportunities. We reached 21,000 readers in 2011 and are aiming for over 30,000 this year, and though we are an Connecticut-based publication, our unique content has earned us readers throughout the entire planet. If we are able to move forward in our business goals with the Idea Cafe grant, The Mercurial could easily hold a similar application process for new businesses and award the winners free advertising along with some fantastic media coverage. The Mercurial is all about the little guys doing great things, so this would be a perfect package to offer other businesses.

If we really strike it big, it would be cool to do a "Make a Wish" type grant for new businesses. Start-ups and innovative entrepreneurs would write to us about their business and ask for one big thing that they would want for their offices, staff, etc. Then, we would all go on a shopping spree with the grant winner and make the wish happen. We could buy signage, finance renovations, buy a banging espresso machine, pay for weekly yoga sessions at the office...whatever the entrepreneur dreamed (within our means) we would do.