Why Should You Shop Small?
Small Business Saturday celebrates our local businesses and encourages you to shop small and shop local. Why should you shop small when it’s so easy to simply pop online and buy a new pair of shoes, or order those branded shirts for your next work event, or send those flowers to your wife with just a few clicks of your mouse? Let’s take a look at a few of the reasons you should shop small:
Small Businesses Give Back to Your Community
When you shop at the local florist or the locally-owned appliance store, you’re supporting your friends, neighbors, schools, fire departments, and city. When you shop small, your sales tax stays in your neighborhood and helps fund education, park, street improvements, libraries, and vital services like firefighting. Not only that, but small business owners are your friends and neighbors. The money their businesses make goes back into the community through local support services (construction firms, lawyers, accountants, sign makers, cleaning services, etc.); through donations of time and money to local organizations, events, and fundraisers; and through the jobs they create.
Local Businesses Create Local Jobs
The Small Business Administration reports that there are 30.2 million small businesses in the United States, which employ 47.5$ of the state’s private workforce. Small businesses continue to be the leading creator of new jobs in the United States. The Small Business Administration reports that local businesses added 8 million jobs to the American economy since 1990 while the expansion of large chains reduced jobs by 4 million.
Shopping Small Preserves Your Community
The American Independent Business Alliance has another great reason to shop locally: “The disappearance of local businesses leaves a social and economic void that is palpable and real — even when it goes unmeasured,” AIBA says. “A community’s quality of life changes in ways that macroeconomics is slow to measure, or ignores completely.” A community without thriving small businesses would feel empty and impersonal. Can you imagine living in a community with nothing but big box stores, chain restaurants, and strip malls? By participating in Small Business Saturday and making the effort to Shop Small year-round, you’re giving back to your hometown in a million different small ways. Small businesses make a neighborhood more diverse and interesting.
How Can You Shop Small?
It’s easy to shop small and it doesn’t just mean buying from the charming gift shop downtown. Shopping small includes independent retailers of clothing, furniture, sign making, cabinets and woodworking businesses, machine shops, appliance stores, florists, and more.
It also includes locally-owned restaurants, coffee shops, bakeries, farmer’s markets, and local food co-ops.
And don’t forget locally owned service industries like accounting, lawyers, cleaning or landscaping services, mechanics, telecommunications, computer repair, marketing and website services, and banking!
Shopping small is a great way to support your local community. Join us on Saturday November 24th for Small Business Saturday.
