Correction — The Best Kept Secrets Tour, founded by Carson's in the Cornfields in New Holland, will donate $1 to Friendship Community for every $6 it receives in sales. Also, there were 886 tickets sold in October, and spring sales are just beginning. This was not clearly stated in the article below, posted on LancasterOnline Tuesday.

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Plummeting profits and rising costs, increasing jobless claims, a global credit crunch and days when only a handful of customers walk in through the door, how are small, independent Lancaster County businesses able to cope?

New Holland's "Carson's in the Cornfields" has come up with an innovative way to weather the ongoing financial storm: Quit battling the competition and, instead, join forces with it.

"Business can be very cut-throat, but in this economy, I felt it was a better idea if we worked together to generate business and create something great," Melissa Nordoff, who co-owns New Holland's Carson's in the Cornfields along with her mother, Nancy Carson, said.

"United, we can come up with something that's better for our clients and with bigger rewards for businesses," she said. "Especially in this economy … the last thing you want to do is to be out there all on your own."

What Carson's has created is a new initiative called The Best Kept Secrets tour, a project aimed at locals that introduces them to little-known independent businesses throughout Lancaster County.

Nordoff said she had a "trial run" of the idea in October, which involved 10 local businesses and drew more than 250 customers. This spring, she said, she's expanding the program to 33 businesses and has already drawn in more than 800 new clients.

The way the program works is simple: Customers purchase a six-dollar "tour bag" that contains coupons, a guide to businesses, a tour bracelet (identifying them as members of the tour) and a calendar that lists dates and times of special workshops and events being held at participating businesses across the county.

Tour members then have three weeks (April 18 to May 2) to visit whichever businesses they choose, earning prizes, receiving discounts and learning about things such as local gourmet food, area greenhouses and Lancaster County antiques.

"This is a way for businesses to join together and promote themselves with a minimum of cost. We all have our different resources and client bases, and I see no reason why I shouldn't be able to share my customers with a café or bookstore, say, or welcome in new clients from a clothing store," Nordoff said.

"What these businesses have in common is that we're all independently owned and service-oriented. In addition, a lot of these businesses are also family-owned," she said.

A New Holland native who graduated from The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., Nordoff moved to Annapolis, Md., following her graduation, where she worked in advertising. After getting pregnant with her first child, she said, Nordoff and her husband moved back to Lancaster County to be closer to family, as well as to help run the family business.

Located at 245 Grist Mill Road in New Holland, Carson's in the Cornfields offers garden furnishings, cards, candles, and antiques and home furnishing accents like architectural pieces, antique watering cans, Victorian spindles and "primitive" antiques — 18th- and 19th-century objects that were often used on working farms.

This spring's tour, she said, will take participants from New Holland to as far away as Bowmansville, Lititz, Gap, Ephrata and Cochranville, involving businesses as diverse as nurseries, farms, home and garden centers, food stores and jewelry boutiques.

Proceeds from the fall tour, she said, were donated to the Lancaster County Conservancy. Earnings from the upcoming tour will go to Friendship Community, a Lititz-based ministry helping those with developmental disabilities, she said.

Tour participant Tim Sheldon of Sheldon's Gallery in Ephrata said his firm took part in the event in October and got "an excellent response," drawing in new customers from all over Lancaster County.

His business, at 20 W. Main St. in Ephrata, which he co-owns with his daughter Rhonda, sells work by local and national artists and specializes in landscape paintings of Lancaster and Chester counties, as well as photographs, many of which are taken at the nearby 6,000-acre Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area.

"This (tour) is an incredibly creative idea that brings people into our shop, and not only do they come in, they also come back," he said. "This is a tour that shows people parts of our area they wouldn't normally see."

The Best Kept Secrets tour, he said, "gives folks a nice few weekends out" exploring smaller, independently-owned area shops. There are a lot of back roads with a lot of interesting little shops all over Lancaster County, Sheldon said.

"This tour … not only helps businesses band together, it also helps people discover what's in their own backyard."

For more information on the Best Kept Secrets Tour, call Carson's in the Cornfields at 354-7343 or visit www.carsonsinthecornfields.com.