Mableton Printer Wins Small Business Of The Year Award

The Alignable Small Businessperson of the Year contest has announced its 2018 winners. In Mableton, Sandy Brown of Printing & Promotional Solutions LLC has been named a winner. The contest spanned more than 1,400 communities in the U.S. and Canada and has nearly 2,400 local winners.

Competition criteria focused on local SMB role models who are dedicated to helping other small businesspeople succeed. After an extended round of nominations, top nominees advanced to the finalist stage, where local Alignable members voted for their favorite candidate.

Small businesspeople are responsible for 65 percent of the new jobs in America and 50 percent of the GDP. As an online network of small businesses in North America, Alignable.com is honoring the top local small businesspeople -- elected by their peers -- as both strong business role models and major contributors to the success of their communities.

Here is Alignable.com's profile of Sandy Brown.

A new study commissioned by American Express shows that U.S. small businesses contribute $4.8 trillion to the GDP, equivalent to that of Japan, which has the third-largest economy in the world. The Small Business Economic Impact Study takes a county-level look at the economic benefits of shopping locally and how vital small businesses are to communities.

Among the findings:

• An average of two-thirds of every dollar spent at small businesses in the United States stays in the community.
• Every dollar spent at a small business creates an additional 50 cents in local business activity as a result of employee spending and businesses purchasing local goods and services.
• In addition to small businesses directly employing members of the community, spending by those small businesses and their employees in the area also supports jobs. In fact, the study found, for every 10 jobs at a small business, another seven are supported in the local community.

In 2010, according to the Small Business Administration, there were 27.9 million small businesses, and 18,500 firms with 500 employees or more. Over three-quarters of small businesses were non-employers; this number has trended up over the past decade, while employers have been relatively flat.