Small retailers have to compete with shopping malls, big chains like Wal-Mart and online giants like Amazon.com during the holiday season. Here is a look at some strategies some small retailers are using to attract and satisfy shoppers:

START WITH KICKSTARTER: When the owners of Appalatch decided to seek money for their apparel company on the fundraising website Kickstarter.com, they timed the campaign to create buzz for the holidays. People who raise money on Kickstarter often give T-shirts to donors. Mariano deGuzman and Grace Gouin, who started the campaign Oct. 22, are giving away the Asheville, N.C., company’s custom-made sweaters. The exposure on Kickstarter has led shoppers to visit Applatch’s website, where the number of daily visitors has soared to 3,000 from between 100 and 200 before the fundraising campaign began.

 
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Shadrack Productions’ show allows drivers to meander through an intricately choreographed display of Christmas lights that pulse and dance to pre-programmed music broadcast over your vehicle’s radio at 107.5 FM.

The dazzling show — built around the theme of “The 12 Days of Christmas” — took the Bristol, Tenn.-based production company three tractor-trailer loads of equipment, 10,000 feet of data cable and roughly a million LED lights to create, organizers said.

“It’s awful labor intensive,” said Roger Forbes, on-site manager for Shadrack. “We’ve been here two weeks, working 12 hours a day. But it’s going to generate a lot of revenue – people going out to local restaurants and things like that. And it’s a lot of fun for us. We enjoy it.”

The show is the brainchild of Shadrack’s Keith Glover, a retired music teacher and high school principal who owns a boat dealership in Bristol. In 2006, Glover and his son, Josh, were looking for a way to boost business during the slower winter months and came up with the idea of creating a musical light show.

Glover spent more than 700 hours programming his first Christmas show in Bristol, synchronizing the dancing lights to songs such as the Mannheim Steamroller’s “Stille

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Wineries in the state have grown five-fold in the last decade and grape acreage has more than doubled, according to statistics from the N.C. Department of Agriculture Consumer Services. There are now over 100 wineries and more than 400 vineyards in the state, making North Carolina among the top five destinations for wine travelers and creating an annual economic impact of over $1.25 billion. And, of course, Polk and Henderson counties are within easy drives of the nation’s most visited winery, established in 1985, at Asheville’s Biltmore Estate.

When Dennis Lanahan wanted to establish a vineyard somewhere in North Carolina in the late 1990s, he visited Biltmore and spoke with the vineyard manager there who, he said, recommended Tryon or Hendersonville because of their thermal belt climates that are favorable to grape cultivation. Lanahan said that Biltmore’s manager also told him, “If you grow grapes, we’ll buy them.”

Lanahan found land in the Pea Ridge Road area of Tryon and, in 2001 cleared acreage for what would, a year later, become Mountain Brook Vineyards. He planted 7½ acres, and, this summer, introduced his first vintage of Chardonnay, with vintages of Pinot Grigio, Petit Verdot and a Bordeaux blend to

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“(Vaniman) is visiting from Asheville and we were going hiking today and it started to rain, so I said, ‘We’re going to Oskar Blues,’” Poor said. “Actually, I don’t come all that frequently, but anytime I’ve got a friend or a guest who hasn’t been here, I want to bring them.”

One look at the transformed facility at the back of Mountain Industrial Drive and it’s easy to see why. At any given time, one can find anything from a cornhole tournament or community group bike ride to one of many fundraising events going on at the brewery.

Besides the appeal of a wide variety of hand-crafted beers brewed on premise, visitors to Oskar Blues usually are wowed by the sheer size of the brewing operation, marked by two rows of 200-barrel tanks that now stretch the length of the 30,000-square-foot facility and rise up to the mezzanine where the tasting room resides.

Western North Carolina’s largest brewery – until Sierra Nevada opens shortly – Oskar Blues shipped out 9.2 million cans of beer to 16 states in the first 10 months of this year.

“That,” Marketing Director Anne-Fitten Glenn said, “is a lot of beer.”

A year of growth, community

On Dec. 12, Oskar Blues

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“Game time!”

An hour ago, Toney Frank was reminding his crew this is Founder’s Day — UPS’s 106th birthday. In two days, if all goes well, his team will hit another milestone — 30,000 safe workdays — which will call for a party.

Frank asks his crew members what they’d like to grill.

“Steak,” they reply in unison — before bursting into laughter. The Atlanta air division manager shakes his head.

“What is steak?” he asks. “Chopped beef.” If they hit their goal, they plan to celebrate with burgers.

For now, there’s work to be done. His starting call is the cue: Dozens of workers in yellow vests begin to zip between planes. Semis arrive. Armored vehicles pull up to the jets with “high-value cargo,” better known as cash.

Most nights, four UPS planes fly out of Atlanta – three to Louisville, Kentucky, and one to Philadelphia. It’s a small operation compared to the hub in Kentucky, but the pressure is real.

Sometimes they carry something special, like live whales or terra-cotta figures; most nights it’s mail, flowers, floor samples, lobsters – whatever comes in from Atlanta’s workday and has to be somewhere fast.

Packages are tagged, secured, weighed and collected in massive containers designed for

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Gala Vocal Chamber Music concert tonight

Brevard College will host a performance by Gala Vocal Chamber Music at 7:30 tonight in the Porter Center for Performing Arts.

Gala Vocal Chamber Music is composed of Grammy-nominated mezzo-soprano D’Anna Fortunato, flutist Peter H. Bloom and pianist Mary Jane Rupert. Together, they perform chamber works from the European baroque period to 21st century America, including the music of Handel, Schubert, Ravel, Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn, Elizabeth Vercoe and others.

Called “affecting, superb” by The New York Times, Fortunato has performed with pre-eminent American symphonies including Philadelphia, New York Philharmonic, San Francisco, Houston, Cleveland, Boston and Dallas. She has performed leading roles with major opera companies, including the New York City Opera, Glimmerglass Opera and Opera San Jose and has appeared in festivals, including Berlin’s Spectrum Concerts, the Rome Bach Festival, Marlboro, Casals, Tanglewood, Blossom and Newport.

In 2006, Fortunato was a Grammy nominee in three categories, including best classical vocal recording. A regional Met Winner, she also received the Naumburg Prize and the Jacopo Peri Award. Fortunato serves on the faculty of the New England Conservatory College Division.

Bloom’s work encompasses a wide range of chamber music, old and new. He is also a jazz performer. Bloom was

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An elk that butted heads with an Asheville, N.C., photographer in Great Smoky Mountains National Park was euthanized Friday after a YouTube video of the encounter went viral.

That video had garnered almost 1 million views and more than a 1,000 comments, though park officials said the elk had become used to eating people food and was a problem before approaching the photographer.

In the end, the elk was done in as much by Doritos as it was by the video fame, the park said.

The decision to euthanize the elk was a first for the park, spokeswoman Dana Soehn said.

The video “was the first incident that we know of that the elk engaged in physical contact” with a visitor, Soehn said. The footage “was a critical step in the decision-making” to euthanize.

“This was not a one-time incident,” she said. “(The video) was a trigger; the physical contact escalated our decision.”

The video, shot Oct. 20 along the Cataloochee Trail, shows the male elk head-butting James York, who was sitting along the trail shooting still photographs. Neither York nor the elk were hurt.

York said he was “truly saddened” by the decision to put down the animal. “I was really looking

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