Small Business Saturday by Waltham resident Jessica Lucci
Small Business Saturday: an opportunity for communities to celebrate their local shopping gems, enhance neighbourhood relationships, encourage entrepreneurs and artists, and gain the joy that comes with thoughtful gifting.
The regional paper this week featured a front-page article about shopping locally. It proclaimed that the city had "lots of small businesses" to shop at. Throughout the article, it listed FIVE.
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1. A local vacuum and small appliance store
2. A local tea shoppe
Find out what's happening in Walthamfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
3. A new restaurant
4. A pottery boutique
5. A bank that is giving away free doughnuts on Saturday
I have no ill will towards these five businesses. Three of them have seen me as a customer. One of them has received positive reviews from me on social media. I bore umbrage with the fact that the two page article extolling the virtues of shopping local waxed poetic on the politics of patronizing small businesses, without offering a larger variety of options for would-be customers.
Over Thanksgiving dinner, my small group of townies discussed the issue of Black Friday, the local economy, and the small business options available. Our city is blessed with a diverse culture, artists, tradespeople, and entrepreneurs. Finding them is not as easy as strolling down Main Street though. Gift cards for local restaurants? Delicious and a special treat, plus it boosts business for hard-working restaurateurs. Salons and spas? A gift card packaged with exotic lotion is a lovely token for someone who could use some pampering. You could get everyone on your list a different gift card for a unique small business in your town. It could make for a fun walking tour as you traverse storefront to storefront.
My tablemates at Thanksgiving were gung ho about shopping local. They expounded the importance of supporting local businesses, and strengthening our community by building up the store owners in it. Stories of holidays past were shared: Dad as a boy taking the trolley downtown to buy a TV lamp for his mother and finagling a way to get it home without breaking it; Grandma taking the girls to Cronin's department store as the boy trudged along with the promise of Brigham's ice cream. The latest and greatest child indulgences at Mr. Big Toyland, puzzles and records at A.T. Ball, and pretty writing instruments and stationary at Faulkners rounded out generations of gracious gifting. Driving through those removed and morphed scenes now, we witness the change not just in our shopping habits, but also our culture. We do not walk along store to store, take trolleys and busses, carry bags and boxes brandished with bows. The storefronts are different, the names are chains, and we are too busy and anxious to browse and chat. Through the time travel of Thanksgiving conversation, we reminisce about the good old days, knowing full well we are satisfied with our faster paced less friendly lifestyles.
It makes me wonder though. Where are the book stores? The artists? Designers? Distiller of trinkets? My investigation has turned up few brick-and-mortar such establishments of the independent sort, but online? Online is local! All the wondrous, magical, warm, sweet, thoughtful, impressive, funny, simple, and perfect gifts you are looking for are in fact available locally, from small businesses, and you do not even have to be local to shop local!
Over the next several days I will offer suggestions on purveyors of gifts which will make you feel good about shopping small, and shopping local.
Together, we are stronger! Happy holidays!
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