The IBIZ Districts in Austin are a program of the Austin Independent Business Alliance, a fellow member of AMIBA, and host to the AMIBA leadership gathering I attended this weekend.

The first thing I noticed about the AIBA, is that their message “Keep Austin Weird” was catchy and pervasive enough that I saw mugs with their logo and tagline in the airport gift stores.

That was wild (the airport also had two stages for live music, but that is another story entirely). Not only that, but the stores themselves all seemed to be independents. I learned there is a law that all of the stores in the airport HAVE to be independents. Unfortunately they are wolves in sheeps clothing so to speak, because all the airport does is set up licensing agreements with the local independents, allowing them to use their names and branding, while still using a central (non-indie) operator. Kind of a strange agreement, and I am not clear what it achieves, or hopes to achieve.

Anyway, I started this to tell you about the IBIZ Districts that we visited.  There are four districts around the City, and AIBA has a goal of 20 in the next few years. Essentially, AIBA acts as a facilitator and mediator, bringing together businesses from the area to establish a boundary area for the district, develop neighborhood branding, establish relationships and communication channels, and help to identify all of the independent businesses in the district. This results, initially, in an area map/brochure/directory, and neighborhood banners for the lightpoles and street signs.

Here are some pictures of the front and back of the banners in the East End IBIZ District. The front is part of AIBA’s city-wide IBIZ branding, and the back is the East End’s own logo, which the group of businesses developed together.

You can learn more about the program at the AIBA website.