WordPress.com Teams Up with Rebrand Cities to Bring Local Businesses Online
Inside our plan to work with 10,000 small businesses.
Cities are collections of neighborhoods — and neighborhoods are powered by small business. From coffee shop owners to fitness instructors, therapists to thrift stores, it’s the people we see in the storefronts next door who build and reinforce the unique character of our cities.
At WordPress.com, we want to support local businesses as they grow their own communities (and their revenue!) on the open web. That’s why we’ve teamed up with Rebrand Cities, a project founded by Hajj Flemings to bring small businesses online, in pursuit of an audacious goal: 10,000 new websites for 10,000 small businesses and to tell their stories.
Eighty-one percent of people research a business online before making a purchase — but of the 28 million small businesses that drive the American economy, 46 percent still operate without a website. We want to change that.
Rebrand Cities, a national civic design and brand project, is a multi-disciplinary collaboration with residents, community stakeholders, and local governments to strengthen the fabric — both concrete and virtual — of our cities. We’re starting with Detroit, Miami, Newark, and Philadelphia.
Our collaboration kicked off in Detroit, where we hosted a hackathon to work with local entrepreneurs. You can see the results of that collaboration here:
We’ll be announcing more cities soon. For more information on how your business can participate, go to Rebrand.city.
Upcoming City Info Sessions and Exploratory Events
- Detroit, MI: July 12, 2017
- Newark, NJ: July 14, 2017
- Portland, OR: July 17- 20, 2017
- Philadelphia, PA: July 25, 2017
WordPress.com News 
Please be sure to announce when you’re coming to Memphis. Right now, the only company doing anything similar to this project here is Google and their sites are only free for a limited time. The Public Library and the Small Business Development Centers promote Google and its efforts because it’s at least something, but WordPress is a better option, in my opinion, so I’d love to see this project here in Memphis.
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WordPress Worldwide Revolution…Sounds great.
Just want to know when these info session plan on coming to Toronto, Ontario (Canada)?
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Already on this, in my locale. The notorious fly-over state. Heh heh.
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Sounds awesome! More business and yes I look forward to learning all about this!
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Coming to Baltimore? Please?
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I was born in Newark NJ! Very happy to see this happening all over. Good on you, WP
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I would like to hear you are coming to Indonesia. In my opinion we need this project so bad to decrease poverty rate.
But people here loves freebies, I wonder WordPress.com will develop business here
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Wow that’s great new to hear. Good job WordPress. Just wondering when will you guys come to Jakarta (Indonesia)?
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This is awesome …Cameroon in Africa is really a developing country or may say underdeveloped country… And such an initiative is going to be of help to many…I for one…thanks for thinking about Cameroon…waiting
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Sounds good I would like to get more information on how to get your business online here in my city
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