The Reasons for Shopping Local (and locally owned). A Healthy Community Starts with Smart Consumer Decisions.

Emporia Main Street supports local shopping all year long. Through events, marketing assistance, access to data, gift certificate programs, and a variety of other initiatives we encourage local citizens to shop local and locally owned. Our organization works hard to place visitors immediately adjacent to our unique local businesses to facilitate in-store traffic and boost sales. You are aware of what we do, but do you know why we do it?

I hope we all know that small businesses are generally synonymous with unique items and more personalized service. These businesses are more likely to create their own items, contract with other local entrepreneurs, and find suppliers that are unique in their approach to generating products for smaller operations. On-site ownership and a smaller staff generally means that customers can develop a business relationship with owners and employees that generates better service over time, and more support for local initiatives. So the top responses for “why shop local” should be:

1. Unique local items.
2. Support for other local businesses.
3. Better service from on-site ownership.
4. More community support for local initiatives.

All of that should sound great to local consumers, right? There are a lot more fantastic reasons to shop local, and most of those reasons help improve the local community and solve local problems. Did you know that sixty-eight cents of every dollar spent at a locally owned business stays local? Local businesses are using local banks, promoting through local advertisers, utilizing local professional services (attorneys, accountants, insurance agents, graphic designers, contractors, etc.), and building wealth locally. Those online purchases from a company that resides who-knows-where retain about five cents on every dollar locally. Non-locally owned chains are somewhere in-between.

Here are some of the community reasons to shop local this holiday season:

1. It helps the local tax base.- If you’ve ever been to a community that acts as the “home town” for a big retailer or internet chain, you might think “this place is really nice!”. Well, it should be; you send your money there. When we keep our money local through local spending choices, we have more dollars to invest in local initiatives, fix local infrastructure, and create a better region. Dense entrepreneurial areas require less infrastructure, and are more valuable per square foot to the tax base, meaning they give local citizens a better “bang” for their tax base “buck”. Every dollar you spend is a vote for how you would like your community to look. How are you voting?
2. Shopping local builds local wealth.- I’m not saying that local entrepreneurs are independently wealthy (they aren’t). But, when we support local businesses that can retain/attract dollars, we can start building wealth locally in local institutions that care about the community. If you look around at local foundations or donors, there is a clear correlation between local entrepreneurship (and businesses that support entrepreneurs) and local giving. Businesses that are owned locally give a MUCH higher percentage of their gross sales back to local initiatives because they can make decisions locally (not at a corporate office), and this is their community too.
3. It’s environmentally friendly.- Building out developments with a sea of parking lots and extremely limited pedestrian access with often no connection to housing isn’t exactly “green”. Local entrepreneurs often locate next to other local entrepreneurs in mixed use areas (like a downtown) full of offices, restaurants, entertainment, retail, and housing. The mix of uses in a compact setting allows for citizens that live in cores to travel less in vehicles, and generates more pedestrian opportunities for visitors.
4. Local entrepreneurs build local leadership.- Nationally, only around 16% of citizens in the United States identify as “entrepreneurs”, but if you look at local elected officials, area organizational boards, volunteer groups, and other “doers”, entrepreneurs make up a disproportionate percentage of leadership. Why? Entrepreneurs are natural problem solvers that know how to move beyond “talking about the thing” or “governance” to actually “get things done”. The more successful entrepreneurs a community has, the better the leadership culture.
5. Unique local offerings build local pride and regional identity.– If you have a (insert chain restaurant) in your community, you probably aren’t leaving for the expressed purpose of going to that same restaurant in another community. It’s the same for any business type. But, we know that people routinely travel to Emporia to come to our unique businesses from the broader area because they are perceived as “one of one”. If you build more successful unique businesses in your community, you can generate more destination visitor traffic. Community pride is heightened when locals hear how much a visitor loves one of our unique elements.

When you are deciding how to spend your money this holiday season, we hope that you intentionally focus on local businesses. It provides everyone on your shopping list with awesome gifts, AND it helps the community in numerous other ways.