Downtown Asheville merchants are not seeing the surge of summer shoppers they had hoped for post-Tropical Storm Helene. Still awaiting even keel nine months after the storm, shop owners are testing their marketing prowess to bring back business.
Several downtown businesses say they are about 20% down in sales this year compared with last, says Hayden Plemmons, executive director of the Asheville Downtown Association (ADA).
That metric aligns with the 20% dip in foot traffic recorded in June by Placer.ai, a tracking software used by the ADA to record visitors’ geolocation through third-party apps. That data, Plemmons says, is based on a four-week period compared with the same time last year…