With a post on Cinda Baxter’s blog AlwaysUpward.com four years ago, a pro-local business movement was born. Within a week of its launch, her site had 7,600 unique visitors. Within a year, American Express was using her thoughts and ideas to start its ‘Shop Local‘ Small Business Saturday project on the Saturday after Black Friday. Baxter started this pro-local movement as her friends who owned businesses did not see much in sales from Black Friday as shoppers frequented the larger, national stores almost exclusively.
Baxter’s simple blog posting spread like a wildfire and led to the launch of The 3/50 Project. The project asks a simple question, ‘what three independently owned businesses would you miss most if they went out of business?’ Once you have defined these businesses, Baxter suggests that you commit to spending $50 at each of no less than three locally owned and operated businesses each month. If half of all Americans did this, $43 billion a year in sales would go to local businesses.
It is critically important to our community to shop local as these businesses spend their monies locally as well. For every $1 spent at a local business, those businesses spend $0.68 locally. In comparison, national chains spend 40-75% less than their local counterparts in our community.
It is critical to the vibrancy of the community to support local businesses as they create more and better local jobs. Money exported outside the community by shopping at national businesses drains resources from your community. This is even worse with some retailers where a majority of their products come from China. This means that your purchases at those types of retailers weaken the local and national economies.
In honor of these entrepreneurs during National Entrepreneurship Month, shop locally.
