Shop local this week during Plaid Friday, Small Business Saturday

Not to be lost between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Small Business Saturday was created to remind consumers to include hometown retailers in their shopping plans.

But when a lot of focus tends to be on big-box stores, it leaves some wondering where small businesses fit into the picture.

Hey Rooster General Store owner Courtney Webb organized the second annual Gallatin Galavant, a shop crawl with discounts, food and more along Gallatin Avenue on Small Business Saturday. Similar results were discovered in many cities, indicating that buying local not only benefits local business owners, but also the communities those owners and their customers call home. By shopping locally, residents support the people, businesses and ideas that make their neighborhood unique. As part of the event small businesses throughout the region can register on the Small Business Saturday website.

Small Business Saturday was launched in 2010 by American Express, which estimates that $14.3 billion was spent at small independent businesses previous year during the event. This book, highly recommended to me by a local nonprofit leader, is helping me move (finally!) from the question of “How can I get everything done?” to “Which problem do I really need to solve?”

The campaign will be focused on this Saturday, the first Saturday after Thanksgiving, which has become known as “Small Business Saturday”.

Supporting our small, independently owned businesses this holiday season helps individual entrepreneurs survive and our downtowns and small communities thrive.

Small Business Saturday is a national campaign started five years ago by American Express to encourage people across the country to support small and local businesses.

In Mount Clemens, numerous small business owners that operate in the downtown area agree that while Small Business Saturday gives them that extra boost in revenue, it’s simply just a fun day.

Passport books are free, Lindholm said, adding that “you’ve got to go to one of our businesses on Saturday to get one”.

“The signs are going up, the wreaths are up”, Murray said. Build Bazaar is a rotating pop-up marketplace celebrating emerging entrepreneurs from Build Institute’s small business development program.

“What would Broughton Street be if there was not a single local business there?”

“It’s a way to draw people down to Concord to discover and see what there’s to do downtown”, said Susan Sokul, Intown Concord’s communications and events coordinator.