Everyone is familiar with Black Friday and Cyber Monday, days when we are to go to the big retailers such as Target, Walmart, Amazon.com, and Ebay to purchase holiday gifts. But what about the locally-owned businesses in your town? All this focus on the big box retailers has a negative effect on their business. Welcome to “Small Business Saturday!”
More than a dozen advocacy, public, and private organizations are joining American Express OPEN, the company’s small business unit, in declaring the Saturday after Thanksgiving as Small Business Saturday. This year, Small Business Saturday is November 27, 2010. A day to come together in support of the small businesses we love. The shops and restaurants that employ our neighbors and reinvest our money close to home. The businesses that are the heartbeat of our communities and local economies.
How can you support Small Business Saturday? First, you can visit www.facebook.com/smallbusinesssaturday where you can “like” Small Business Saturday and syndicate news feeds about the day to your personal, virtual networks. There, you can also spread the word about the day and your favorite businesses by giving a shout-out to your favorite local shops and restaurants via Facebook and Twitter.
You can also support Small Business Saturday by patronizing the local, independently owned small businesses in your neighborhood. That could mean anything from having dinner on your way home from the mall during the holiday shopping season or reserving a part of your holiday gift budget to spend at a local small business.
The goal of Small Business Saturday is to inspire you to support the local small businesses that mean the most to you. Supporting small business is all about supporting our communities.
Small business is the heartbeat of local communities and the engine of the US economy. Over the past two decades, small businesses created 65 percent of net new jobs. In addition, for every $100 spent in locally owned independent stores, $68 returns to the community through taxes, payroll, and other expenditures.
Save some dollars for those local businesses that mean so much to your local community and support Small Business Saturday. With your support, this may actually become an annual tradition that helps your local ma-and-pa shoppes stay competitive with the big boys! A special thanks to American Express Open for their support of small businesses.
good article, and thanks for info