Developing an image of Ashe County and branding it for marketing purposes has been identified as an approach for helping grow small business.

An image of the county as a tourism destination will likely play a major part of the effort but organizers say tourism is not necessarily the final objective.

A group called the Small Business Alliance, organized by the Ashe Chamber of Commerce, will pursue defining the initiative. About 50 members of the group loosely identified as the alliance held a meeting two weeks ago that expressed the direction of their group.

The alliance has met with Henry Doss as an adviser in development of local small businesses. Doss held a series of meetings to identify a way for the group to help small businesses.

Doss told the assembly two weeks ago that the meetings led him to a set of conclusion that branding would help develop businesses, the effort needs to increase traffic and that the effort needed collaboration between area agency and communities interested in the same objective.

Doss said that the exact definition of brand for the county is yet to be determined. “The brand should say what the county is not be what we say it is,” he said.

The focus on tourism was one of the major points identified by the series of meetings.

Also identified in the meetings was the desire of divergent groups to come together on the effort to bring more people to the county.

Doss and top chamber officials will meet with some of those groups over the coming weeks and try to define ways the groups and area governmental entities can work together on the branding effort.