Sustainable Saturday - Small Business Saturday

When is the last time you shopped in a store that wanted your business, REALLY wanted your business, and was grateful when they got it?

For me - that experience was today.

After Black Friday comes Small Business Saturday.  This year, a number of local businesses here in the Binghamton, NY area banded together to cross-promote their businesses at what they called the local North Pole.  The weather matched the holiday mood, with snow flurries and wind.

Thanks to Small Business Saturday I visited several local small businesses for the first time.  At each, I was treated like a valued customer, with smiles and thank you's.  At several, I received personalized service and unexpected discounts. At one, I even was able to take advantage of free gift wrap.

I was pleased to see that many other people were taking advantage of the local shopping day today.

Fresh Start Market is so named because they were flooded out (in September, 2011) of the location in Owego they operated out of for 16 years.  Like so many of us, they managed to survive the floods caused by Tropical Storm Lee.  They reopened, bigger and better and featured (besides the normal "health food store" stock) locally produced foods.

Country Additions Gift Shop pleasantly surprised me with a selection of items made in the USA, including some made right here in New York State. (I also appreciated the chocolate samples - thanks!)

Hillside Garden Center gave us an especially warm welcome and 50% off some of their plants.  We picked up a variegated rosemary plant, not hardy in our zone 5b area (no rosemary is) but we will try to overwinter it indoors.

It's hard to see in this photo but the leaves are gold and green.

And, at Ruby and Sons, a local 3rd generation jewelry store (and, incidentally, owned by a woman), I am going to get a wedding band resized - a band that means so much to me.

Was there a Small Business Saturday in your area?  Or are you a small business owner that would like to share your experience?

The Buying Dilemma

It's a very popular thing right now to "Buy American":  we must maintain our manufacturing base, and save jobs for Americans.  Most of us, in this Christmas shopping season, have received email pleas from friends and relatives.  I've been trying to "buy local" (or at least "Made in the U.S.A.") for several years now.

But sometimes the choice is hard.

When we visited the State of Maine back in September, we were impressed by the pains the people of Maine took to promote items "made in Maine".  There were a number of stores in the Portland and Brunswick, ME areas specializing in Maine-made merchandise:  everything from mustard to Poland Springs water and vodka to blankets to balsam pillows to toothpaste.  Supermarkets featured local foods and beverages in special displays.

But we also found that enough of the merchandise in a Maine institution, Renys, was not made in the U.S.A.

Too many times now, people who want to do right by their fellow Americans face a choice:

Buy merchandise not made in the United States from a local business?

Or buy American from a national chain?

I've wanted to "buy local" in light of the devastating floods that hit our part of upstate NY in September but I am finding that choice isn't so simple.

On Black Friday, we found an area rug in our local Kohl's, on a great sale, and proudly made by Mohawk in the U.S.A.

But in a local gift store in nearby Owego, a town hard hit by the flood, we tried our best to replace Christmas ornaments destroyed in the flood - and found that the majority of the ornaments - and all the patriotic ornaments - were made in China.

Should we have skipped the rug because it was being sold by a large national chain? (no, we bought it.)

Should we have passed on the China-made Christmas ornaments? (this one was harder but we did buy some.)

What about the local Home Depot?  National chain, blocks from our house, hit hard by the flood of September 8, reopened the day before Thanksgiving.  On Black Friday we were there at 5:05 a.m., passing under a sign saying "Welcome Back, Friends!".  The store was mobbed, and I would bet that some of those employees welcoming us had lost their homes in the flood.  They would have lost their jobs, too, if Home Depot had "hung it up".  (we still try to buy in a locally owned hardware store when possible but some of those Black Friday specials were irresistible.)

These decisions come nearly every day.  Today, I needed a new dish drainboard - and I ended up buying a made in U.S.A. product from Sterlite, in a national chain store (Target). The price was slightly higher than the Rubbermaid (made in China) but I gladly paid it.  But still, it wasn't from a small business. 

In other words, this decision - like so much in life - isn't that simple.  All I can hope is that I make the right decisions with my hard earned shopping dollars.