Christchurch retailers are hoping up to 30,000 Wellington shoppers will reach for their wallets at the Hands Up retail expo in July.
A group of Wellington business owners, called Hands Up Wellington, will host up to 80 Christchurch retailers at the TSB Arena on July 2 and 3 in an effort to help quake-affected retailers sell stock, promote their businesses and give them hope to move on.
"Our aim is the stock people bring up will be bought by the end of the show," project co-ordinator Heather Morris said. The expo, thought up by Wellington-based Kitchen Elements director Rochelle Jackson, will feature giftware, clothing, jewellery, furniture and sports gear businesses.
Shipping to Wellington will be sponsored and business owners are being offered half-price accommodation in the city. Contemporary jeweller Debra Fallowfield is one of the Christchurch business owners taking part in the expo to regain some of the momentum lost due to February's quake.
Fallowfield's Lichfield St studio near Poplar Lane was still intact but had been yellow-stickered and the rest of the area was "just a complete mess", she said.
"The hardest thing was trying to get in after February because I had no tools. "Insurance was not going to pay out because they knew they were in there."Eventually, Fallowfield was able to recover her tools from her store and get back to work, but she has to "catch up" after being out of work for a month.
Fallowfield said she knew of other businesspeople who would like to attend the retail expo but they had not been able to get in to their buildings to recover what they needed.
For now, Fallowfield was working from home. She and her husband have set up her studio in one half of their bedroom, leaving a "little Japanese sleeping pod" of a bedroom, and meeting with customers at the kitchen table.
Pug Design Store owners Robyne Voyce and Rudolf Boelee lost their Kilmore St store after the building was badly damaged in the September quake and then demolished after the February 22 earthquake.
Voyce said she hoped the expo would help kickstart the business, which she is trying to keep afloat by selling goods online. While the business is not in debt, they do have a lot of money tied up in their stock, which is in storage.
Online trading had been slow and Voyce said they were "nowhere near" making a living from it. "At the moment we can't see our future and that makes it harder to make plans."
Voyce said the expo would be a great opportunity to promote the business and attract new customers to make it feasible to survive in Christchurch. "I would like to stay in Christchurch but I don't know if financially we can afford to."
She said small businesses needed more help. "The way for Christchurch to go ahead is for small businesspeople to be supported so people can get back on their feet. "Little individual businesses need supporting. You don't want them to go somewhere else."