Proudly Thame
A local-first initiative for the businesses and people of Thame
One mark.
One town.
Free for every independent business in Thame.
A word to Thame
Thame has been a trading town since 1215
Eight hundred years later, that is still what it is — and it is in better shape than the national high-street story suggests.
In February 2025 a physical count of the town centre found 161 retail premises: fifty-seven shops, sixty-one service businesses with premises, eight pubs and clubs, seven restaurants, ten cafés, eleven takeaways and seven charity shops. Around ninety-five per cent of Thame’s retail sits on or around the High Street, with almost no out-of-town retail park pulling against it.
That is unusual, and worth saying plainly: this is a working town centre serving a catchment of nearly forty-two thousand people. What Thame does not have is a single mark that says this one is ours.
Not a directory. Not a Facebook group. A mark — in the window, on the door, on the stall — that a resident recognises without having to think about it, and that tells them the money they are about to spend stays here.
Proudly Thame in one sentence
One mark, given free to every genuine local independent in this town
And a year-round effort to make people look for it.
What you get, and when
No audience is inherited on day one
So rather than promise a movement, here is precisely what arrives, and how quickly.
Within 48 hours
- Your numbered window decal, posted or hand-delivered
- The digital badge for your website, emails and socials
- Your listing live on the Proudly Thame directory
Your first month
- A written feature on your business, published and pushed out
- Your entry in the first printed Thame guide and map
- Access to the members’ group
Across the year
- Two Fiver Fest weeks and Small Business Saturday
- A Christmas push, and a market ambition with the Council
- Every campaign built to send people to the mark
What it costs you
Nothing, forever. Ten minutes to register, and the wall space for a decal.
Two levels
Explained plainly
Proudly Thame — the navy mark
Free. Open to every genuine local independent in Thame. Everything above. This is the mark we want in a hundred and fifty windows.
Proudly Thame Gold
For businesses live and active on OX9.app. Same badge, gold field instead of navy, so it reads differently from across the street.
OX9.app is a paid product from Scott&Young — £95.94 a year at the founding rate. So Gold does, in the end, sit behind something you pay for. If you never take it, nothing is withheld. The full explanation ›
Why it matters
Why local spending is worth arguing about
The case for buying local is not sentiment, and it is not new.
£10 spent with a local business generates around £25 of benefit to the local economy, against about £14 for the same £10 spent in a supermarket. New Economics Foundation
Between 63p and 70p of every pound spent with a local independent stays in the local economy, against as little as 14p to 40p with a national chain. LM3 measure
Spending with a local SME produces two to four times the local benefit of a large chain retailer. Centre for Local Economic Strategies
Small Business Saturday UK drove an estimated £717m of spending with small businesses in a single day in 2016, and £748m in 2017.
Those campaigns work, but they are days. A day is a spike. What a town actually needs is the ordinary Tuesday — the habit, not the event.
That is the job of a mark. A campaign asks people to remember once a year. A mark in a hundred and fifty windows asks them every time they walk down the street.
The Founding 50
Fifty businesses. Numbered 001 to 050.
Founder status that does not expire and cannot be bought back later. Founders get the Founding Member edition of the mark, a permanent place on the founders’ wall, first pick of features, and a say in what Proudly Thame does in its first year.
Scott&Young holds number 001 — as the founder and funder, and as one of fifty, on the same terms as everyone else. There is no fee. The only cost is being early, which is the point.
