Chain-store challenged? Box-store battered? Shopping-mall shamed? Parking-lot panicked?
Do Black Friday and Cyber Monday tend to cramp your style?? There is a new tradition you can adopt to cure your holiday-shopping stress and add some meaning to your thoughtful purchases. Consider getting out there this Saturday, November 28th, to support your local businesses during Small Business Saturday.
This awesome new holiday, created in 2010 as the antithesis of Black Friday in response to dying main streets and frustrations with supporting corporate conglomerates, has gained steam quickly. Heavily supported in ads funded this year by American Express, one of the largest small business lenders in the US, Small Business Friday has hit the mainstream and looks to be a permanent and growing fixture in American holiday shopping tradition. While the holiday shopping season of 2015 is expected to be the strongest in years, more consumers than ever are now turning their dollars toward small mom and pop shops and retailers. And as they should! Small businesses power the US economy; according to the Small Business Administration, 54% of all domestic sales and 40% of all retail jobs come from small businesses.I encourage you to kick off your holidays with a tradition dedicated to supporting local businesses on Small Business Saturday. But how can you join your fellow neighbors in seeking out new ways to support your community businesses as an ongoing tradition that extends far beyond one day? Here are ten awesome and easy ways you can support your local businesses this holiday season:
1. Consider making holiday traditions that support local businesses. This is not just about using your purchasing power on Small Business Saturday (though that's a good one!). This is about finding ways to integrate your local community in your merry-making traditions. Whether it's supporting the same mom and pop restaurant every day-before-Christmas-Eve, or making sure you always use some locally packaged hot chocolate from the corner store every year after light-seeing with your children, or getting together with friends to do a local holiday beer-crawl taste testing, there are oodles of ways you can incorporate supporting a local business into a yearly event.
2. Announce LOCAL! When you give a local gift, make your receiver aware of the gift's source. Making known your thoughtfulness and deliberateness as a purchase adds meaning to your gift, often makes it more valuable in the receiver's eyes, and helps the receiver know where they can source more should they want to support the business further. Consider including a business card with your gift, using an extra tag that announces that the gift is local, using a gift tag that proudly declares where the product was made.3. Do not feel guilty for browsing! I'll admit it: I always feel a little socially awkward walking into a small store if I don't intend to buy. Perhaps it's because I like to browse without feeling obligated to open my tiny wallet, and sometimes I feel guilty saying no in more intimate situations than when I can easily reject a box on a chain-store shelf and keep walking. But don't let your social/emotional feelings about interacting with a small store keep you from interacting with products. Know that you have no obligation to buy anything, and remember that your ability to have closer interaction with owners and employees is a GOOD thing, even when you risk feeling socially awkward. Become familiar with what products and services your local stores have even if it means simply browsing and not buying. Then when you need do something specific, you know where to go and you know you can get it locally. Small business owners know it is better to have clientele browse and leave empty-handed than to never have entered their local store at all.
4. Get over sticker shock. YES. Buying from a small producer almost always comes at a slightly higher price. There are a number of reasons for this, usually related to both quality and compensating someone appropriately for their hours so they can in turn live with a suitable quality of life. Remember that these reasons for paying a higher price are noble, and if it makes consumers in turn less likely to waste, then it is not actually such a terrible thing...
5. Shop local even on the days you don't want to get out of the house! Winter weather getting you down? Consider using websites like Etsy, which have search engines capable of connecting you with artisans close-by, right in your home state!
6. Look for the intersection between Cyber Monday and local businesses. Not enough time to hit up all the local stores on Small Business Saturday? Many local businesses will also offer Cyber Monday deals when you order from their website. These deals can sometimes be seen days before Cyber Monday, helping you to put local products and deals on your radar from the comfort of your couch before the mad holiday rush begins.
7. Create a local wish-list. If you want to support local, don't just consider things you are purchasing for others during the holidays. Think of what others are giving you! With oodles of apps and websites dedicated to wishlists for holidays, wedding celebrations, and baby showers, consider ways you can unplug from the box-store wish-list machine and instead encourage others to get involved in local shopping by turning their attention to things you would enjoy having sourced locally.
8. Shopping local is not just about a one-time stop. Don't forget that Small Business Saturday is just one small day. But many small businesses pride themselves every day of the year on customer service and filling personalized, specialty orders that provide you with a unique and precise product that answers your needs in a way a box store cannot. By creating repeated interactions with merchants, customers are often able to reap the benefits of an intimate customer-producer relationship far beyond one day of shopping a year.
9. Consider gifting an activity. The holidays are not just about giving objects. And supporting local is not just about buying knick-knacks and small, artisan products. Supporting local can also be about ways people can interact with their community. Think about activities offered in your area that can be done with others: things like making use of skiing passes, restauranting with friends, attending a local performance, hiking a local state park, checking out a local farm, touring a nearby winery, and seeking out a local museum with friends are excellent ways to give gifts that support local community.
10. Teach your children that this is what you value. If you want your kids to grow into adults that recognize the value of small producers and family operations, display that behavior first-hand for them to witness by putting your dollars into those things. Your actions will speak loudly and your valuable intentions will be imprinted on their hearts.
Here's wishing you a great kick-off to your holiday shopping on Small Business Saturday. May you make local an integral holiday tradition!
