Page 30 - BusinessWest April 1, 2024

Alex Balise is carrying on her uncle Mike Balise’s tradition of buying coats for students at Springfield’s Homer Street School, now the Swan School.
the Balise company, which has dealerships in the 413, on the Cape, and in Rhode Island; car washes in Western Mass. and Connecticut; five collision centers; and that aforementioned laun- dromat in Springfield’s South End.
This a wide-ranging assignment, one that keeps a staff of six (with some help from a
few agencies) busy, and includes ad creation, media buying, social media, website content, and determining if, how, and to what degree
the company will honor the myriad requests it receives for support from area nonprofits, a dif- ficult assignment because, as she put it, “I can’t think of a single thing that came in that wasn’t a good cause; they’re all good.”
For many years, marketing at Balise was
the purview, if you will, of her late uncle Mike, who succumbed to stomach cancer in 2015 and was named a BusinessWest Difference Maker posthumously in 2016. He was the face of the company, she acknowledged, adding that she has resisted any and all efforts to become the new ‘face,’ noting that “I don’t have the person- ality for it.”
Instead, she has led efforts to make the com- pany’s employees the collective new face, with ads featuring them in many different roles.
“We’re doing a lot to highlight our people in the ads recently, and that makes sense,” she said. “After all, they’re the people who make Balise ... Balise. Our teams are who make the difference, so why not have them be the face?”
Meanwhile, she is carrying on her uncle’s tradition of get- ting involved in the community, especially in the broad realm of education.
Indeed, just as Mike did for several years, she reads in the class- room for Link to Libraries at the recently opened Swan School, a replacement for Homer Street School, which was sponsored by the
“I felt I could make a bigger impact through the family business than
I could on my own if I worked somewhere else.”
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Balise
Continued from page 28
what might come next.
“I’ve been doing more ... projects,” she said, being intentionally
vague. “I’ve been very involved in the car washes, and that’s been a rapid expansion, and we’re also looking at some other business opportunities that we haven’t done before.”
While doing that, she is still leading the marketing efforts for
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