The Holidays: A time for winning (and everyone wins)
The holidays. A time for family. A time for love and good cheer. It’s also time to vocalize our collective support of our local businesses and to shop local, recognizing their importance to this beautiful town.
Every year over the holiday season, for the past 4 in a row, we’ve been having sweepstakes, giveaways, contests and more on our Facebook page and this year is no exception. Last week we collected over $300 in gift certificates from some of our local businesses. Our goal is to give them all to one winner to assist them in shopping local this shopping season, and to give the businesses some needed advertising during one of the most crucial times of the year for their revenue.
We owe a great deal to our local business owners. We could not do it without them. It’s those relationships that are created and maintained that eventually evolve into genuine friendships. We want to say ‘thank you’ to those that sponsored our latest giveaway.
The winner of our latest giveaway is….Nicki Cadien
For every $100 spent at a locally-owned business, $68 stays in the local economy compared to only $43 if spent at a national chain.
Here are 10 reasons to support locally owned businesses:
1. Local Character and Prosperity
In an increasingly homogenized world, communities that preserve their one-of-a-kind businesses and distinctive character have an economic advantage.
2. Community Well-Being
Locally owned businesses build strong communities by sustaining vibrant town centers, linking neighbors in a web of economic and social relationships, and contributing to local causes.
3. Local Decision-Making
Local ownership ensures that important decisions are made locally by people who live in the community and who will feel the impacts of those decisions.
4. Keeping Dollars in the Local Economy
Compared to chain stores, locally owned businesses recycle a much larger share of their revenue back into the local economy, enriching the whole community.
5. Job and Wages
Locally owned businesses create more jobs locally and, in some sectors, provide better wages and benefits than chains do.
6. Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship fuels America’s economic innovation and prosperity, and serves as a key means for families to move out of low-wage jobs and into the middle class.
7. Public Benefits and Costs
Local stores in town centers require comparatively little infrastructure and make more efficient use of public services relative to big box stores and strip shopping malls.
8. Environmental Sustainability
Local stores help to sustain vibrant, compact, walkable town centers-which in turn are essential to reducing sprawl, automobile use, habitat loss, and air and water pollution.
9. Competition
A marketplace of tens of thousands of small businesses is the best way to ensure innovation and low prices over the long-term.
10. Product Diversity
A multitude of small businesses, each selecting products based, not on a national sales plan, but on their own interests and the needs of their local customers, guarantees a much broader range of product choices.
Please shop LOCAL this holiday season. It’s much more important than you think. These small businesses are the backbone of our community.
