Seacoast Support Community Project Helping Local Businesses Stay

A local merchandising company from Dover is trying to help our community. Forward Merch has been in the area for over 20 years, and is doing their best to help area businesses during Covid-19.

Client Manager Mae Roche tells WOKQ that they have put together a fundraising program called the Seacoast Support Community Project or SSCP. They are currently helping to support over 45 businesses on the seacoast and hoping to add more.

The SSCP works like this: Forward Merch takes a business logo and converts it into their town's color. They then put it on a t-shirt and sell that shirt in their web store. The money (after hard costs) goes back into the community, with $10.00 per shirt going directly to the small business. Not only does this help small businesses, but they are also able to put some of their employees back to work to actually do the printing of the shirts.

The colors of the shirts are specific too. They are using each town's school colors. Portsmouth gets maroon, Dover is green, Rochester is red and so on.

In just two weeks, Forward Merch was able to raise over $5,500 that went directly back to the community. Roche tells us that they are hoping to get the word out so other area businesses can join in.

Here are some of their finished products:

If you're interested in purchasing a shirt to help out your community and support local businesses, check out the web store at shop.forwardmerch.com.

Way to go Mae, Forward Merch and the SSCP!