National Independent Retailers Week

July 18-24 is National Independent Retailers Week!

The purpose of this observation is to celebrate the uniqueness that locally owned businesses bring to communities. NIRWeek was created with the hopes that media would make an effort to encourage shopping with locally owned businesses. It is also a week to remind us of the importance of these businesses in our communities.

A few reasons to shop locally:

• When you shop at locally-owned businesses, money stays in your community three times longer. Local businesses and artists usually buy from local suppliers and hire local service providers. It also creates more jobs in that city. (From South Dakota Rural Enterprise).
• A dollar spent at a locally-owned store is usually spent six to 15 times before leaving the community; from that $1, you create $5-14 in value in that community. On the other hand, when you spend $1 at a national chain, 80 percent of the money leaves immediately. (From Northwest Earth Institute’s Choice for Sustainable Living).
• Local business owners and employees are frequently more knowledgeable and have more expertise. One advantage of visiting local businesses for a product/service is that they often specialize which creates better customer service. And sometimes, it’s better to pay a little more one time for a quality product/service than two times an inferior one. (From “Buy Local Western North Carolina” organization).

How can you help?

• Vow to shop locally for the week to support your local independent retailers.
• Create special promotions (like sales, events, etc.) with other independent retailers in your city to market your businesses and the event.
• Inform the media of the benefits of shopping locally and any special promotions local retailers are having.
• Involve local merchants associations like your Chamber of Commerce and Main Street programs to include as many local businesses as possible.

For more info, check out out NationalIndependentRetailersWeek.com.

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Jamie Fleming-Dixon

Jamie Fleming-Dixon is the founder and author of ForColoredGurls.com. Her intention is to empower readers, inspire them to live their most fabulous lives and to motivate them to reach for their dreams and goals. This is done through motivational articles and quotes, interviews with women from all walks of life, posts on topics that affect every area of women's lives and more. For more info about Jamie and FCG, email her at info@forcoloredgurls.com.

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Tags: independent retailers, locally-owned businesses, National Independent Retailers Week, shop at locally-owned businesses, small business, support small businesses

This entry was posted on July 21, 2010 at 9:48 am and is filed under Entrepreneurship, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.