Having served as a director on the West Hollywood Chamber of Commerce Board for nearly 10 years, Genevieve Morrill knew just what it took to serve as President and CEO in 2010.
Under her leadership, Morrill has elevated the chamber to a new level in all capacities: increasing membership by 20 percent, strengthening financial stability, developing and implementing new programs, and promotions that drive traffic and value for businesses. Morrill’s tenacious approach to political issues that affect business and her stellar reputation has turned many a naysayer into a supporter.
Morrill came to work in West Hollywood 14 years ago as director of marketing for the Pacific Design Center.
After four years she assumed the role as vice president managing a team to run the 1.2 million square foot complex.
For five years in this capacity, she managed 160 tenants of showrooms and offices, community relations and government affairs, cultural exhibitions, two Wolfgang Puck restaurants, an outdoor cafe, a bookstore, The Museum of Contemporary Art gallery at PDC, and more than 500 events per year including the Elton John AIDS Foundation’s Oscar event and HBO Emmy party.
Between her positions as chamber executive and vice president of Pacific Design Center, Morrill went back to her entrepreneurial roots of project management producing the inaugural fundraiser program called Structures & Style for the City of West Hollywood to benefit the West Hollywood Community Housing Corporation.
Her background in tourism, combined with marketing and promotion, created a dynamic tour that showcased the City’s greatest attributes while raising awareness and funds for the WHCHC organization.
Morrill currently serves as 2014/2015 President for WC3 (Westside Council of Chambers of Commerce) encompassing 11 Westside Chambers. She serves on boards as ex-officio with the West Hollywood Library Foundation, Visit West Hollywood, West Hollywood Design District, and the Sunset Strip Business Association.
What makes the West Hollywood Chamber of Commerce unique?
We’re very engaging and we have a real wide spread of demographic of businesses and people that participate with the chamber. We asked ourselves how could we be relevant to business these days? So we basically tossed the baby out with the bathwater a few years ago.
What we really did was to almost niche market, which chambers don’t typically do.
Because we really had to be “something to somebody”, and so we created programs and promotions that would help to grow business and drive traffic or create networking opportunities.
We researched generational differences of philosophies and adjusted for people being time-deprived. So rather than say that you had to show up to get anything out of being a member, we had to be able to give value just by joining. We created a lot of promotions that could just drive traffic like shop local
programs, of course, which a lot of chambers do to connect the residents with the business community.
What type of events does the Chamber offer?
We do 190 programs per year with a staff of three from small meetings to big events. We have three large events per year, the State of the City event, which is in partnership with the City of West Hollywood. And then we have our biggest event of the year on Nov. 5 coming up, the Creative City Awards, which is 31 years old. Our chamber was established in 1921, so we’re one of those old chambers. We have networking mixers every month, speed networking every month, committee meetings, and all sorts of different programs and promotions that businesses can get involved in.
What is the chamber’s relationship with the city of West Hollywood?
We collaborate almost daily with the economic development department particularly, and then of course every division of city we work with in good partnership, but we also, as any chamber should, remain a private, separate organization. We have very minor funding from the city, which is less than 5 percent. We take money only for program of services so that we remain an integral part of the business community as their advocate and to be their champion when we need to but still maintain a good relationship with the City.
If we need to talk to the city about certain issues that affect the business community, then this allows us to remain an organization that can focus on its mission to advocate for business.
What is the state of the West Hollywood business community?
The state of the business community is actually growing. It’s getting stronger.
There are a lot of concerns right now. Minimum wage issues, which we feel that we would like to see an equitable program put forth by either the city, or state. The city has just put this forth on the council agenda, like many cities, to look at their own minimum wage. West Hollywood has a living wage, so if anyone contracts with the city itself, it’s a $12/hour requirement for that vendor. West Hollywood is primarily 80 percent micro businesses of two to four employees. So the minimum wage increase for small businesses is going to be a really hard hit. Even when the minimum wage went up to $9 an hour, it affected some businesses that had to lay off some employees to adjust for the increase.
So while we do feel that the minimum wage needs to go up because people can’t make a living, we also feel it needs to be equitable. As example gratuity employees also would get that same minimum wage in addition to tips. We want to look at how this impacts various small businesses and seek government to provide more incentives for businesses on a federal, state and city legislative levels.
How has the chamber evolved since you joined?
Well, like I said, we really threw the baby out with the bathwater. We decided that we needed to find ways to be relevant today and chambers are in a position where if they don’t change and find a way to be relevant and be a resource for businesses, they will become extinct if they don’t start to change. Chambers are still a powerful brand. I think they’re the most trusted brand right now out there. So, we really did what I said before – we created programs and promotions that helped drive traffic and created value for the businesses. We now have a 90 percent retention rate which is unheard of. We’re only getting members drop if they go out of business, which is very few right now. We feel we have a very strong “value added” program for the chamber membership. We also transitioned to a tiered membership dues structure a few years ago, so instead of dictating to a member what they needed to pay based on the number of their employees, we said let’s provide a package of deliverables – benefits that we would deliver. Packages include advertising and promotion and some event tickets at higher levels, but really, it’s a package that you choose as a business, and say “That’s what I need for my business model, this is what’s going to work for me.”
Have you seen the number of members increase because of that?
Yes, absolutely. We’ve increased our membership, we’ve increased our events by 35 percent, as I said, our retention is 90 percent. We increased our membership by about 200 members. We’re up to about 510 members. For a small chamber, that’s a fairly good number. And our budget is slowly increasing as well. We hope to increase staff.
As chair of the Westside Council of Chambers, can you a little bit about WC3?
We are a strong organization of 11 chambers and three corporate partners. The three corporate partners are Southern California Edison, The Gas Company, and Playa Vista/Brookfield Residential.
Our chamber members are Beverly Hills, Hollywood, Santa Monica, Culver City, Century City, West L.A., LAX Costal, Malibu, Venice, Pacific Palisades and of course West Hollywood. So, it’s from Hollywood all the way down to the coast.
We focus on legislation and policies that affect the Westside whether it’s transportation or healthcare or tourism or entertainment, sustainability, etc. We look at what is impacting the Westside, and how can we collectively have a voice for the Westside. We have a very strong organization and one of the events that we do each year is called State of the Westside. This year it will focus on transportation and all aspects of how we get around the Westside.
What is the relationship between so many chambers?
We collaborate. We’re all competitive, but we all collaborate very well. We share ideas and we steal ideas from each other. We talk about things that are good for membership and things that are successful for our chambers so we can all collaborate and be successful.
How long has that partnership been around with all the chambers?
I want to say over 15 years.
How important is the Westside Council of Chambers to the Westside?
We take positions on legislation, so very important! As an example, we supported the film incentive that had been put forth at the state level. A lot of filming is leaving California, and we really need to keep it here. Keep the jobs here. That’s a real economic driver for California. So, looking at issues that affect the Westside and collectively writing to the state legislators and help them understand how important the issue is or opposing things that we feel are not good for business or that we feel could be a dramatic detriment to the economy, or job-killer. There is a lot of legislation that’s put forth that is onerous to business owners and some frivolous because there’s already regulation out there to keep businesses accountable. I think businesses right now are really struggling, and I think even though the economy is coming back and businesses are starting to thrive, your profit margins are much narrower. It’s much harder to stay afloat constantly. So, the more we can create incentive for businesses, the more we can create jobs, and the more we can create job growth here, the more we are doing our jobs.
