Why buy local for the Holidays?

Looking for Holiday or Christmas gift ideas? Why not buy from a local merchant and help your local community as well?

I asked a few people to share reasons to take advantage of quality products from local merchants in your area and I want to share what they had to say:

“Buying local is a great way to strengthen our community on a smaller scale. As a pebble ripples through a pond, then can the positive effects of our stronger base community to ripple out and help others. One of the educational pieces I give my clients is to make sure you are strong, healthy and practice self-care so that your personal resources are set before you help your families. If our community is strong, then we can cause our own ripple effect within and outside ourselves.”
– Nancy Campbell www.campbelllmbt.com

“People should buy local to help support the local businesses that they like to frequent. We are seeing so many shops and restaurants closing down because they just can’t make it in this economy. How disappointing is it to go to the mall only to find your favorite store gone!

Online shopping does make shopping easy; however, consumers should consider calling a store directly and ordering over the phone instead (usually for the same deal). This will help even the bigger name stores stay in business here in Raleigh. If you have found a certain something on-line, do an Internet search to see if the product is available locally. You would be surprised how many items are made and sold right here in North Carolina. Google and Yahoo of course are good resources, but not all small business are listed or come up on the first page of search, so I would encourage consumers to ask their friends (tweet it, Facebook it or e-mail). I had a neighbor looking for a good dentist the other day. She received so many responses simply by sending an e-mail to a group of friends.

Buying local means to keep as many dollars right here in North Carolina as possible. Independent shops do keep more dollars locally; however, big name stores are equally important to our community (ordering on-line from a chain that is present in NC does not count as shopping locally if it doesn’t directly affect the sales at the local chain). Bottom line: consumers should try to shop at a variety of stores and buy local when they can.”
– Terri Voltz http://www.electricbeanz.com”

“You should support your local businesses because otherwise you’ll be paying the government for your neighbor’s unemployment and welfare checks, food stamps, and health care. If you support these local businesses, you enable them to remain in business, which means people stay employed and the debtload of the country and your state can be reduced. Plus, shipping costs are lower. :)”
– Marie-Dolores Anderson www.pamperedchef.biz/mda

“Consumer spending drives 70% of the economy. But when we shop at the big chain stores the dollars we just spent are overseas before sundown.

When we shop at local family owned stores 68 cents of every dollar returns back to our community and when we buy American Made at these stores every penny supports the growth of our own economy! Yep, the economy and the end of this recession is up to each and everyone of us. So get to work, find the “right gifts” for this holiday season… those that are American Made!

Here’s a few great resources to start with!  Links: http://www.FindAmericanMade.com ,  http://www.AmericanStyle.com , http://www.AmericanCraft.com”
– Wendy Rosen – www.americancraft.com

How can you find local businesses? Just search Google Maps ( http://maps.google.com/ ) for what you are looking for and the area you are in. Like “Toy Stores near Raleigh, NC” and you can tell which are local owned vs big box stores. Also make sure your own local business is listed here.

Lets hear your reasons to Buy Local and If you have or know of a local business that has gift ideas please share them too! Please share this with anyone you know and here is a short URL: bit.ly/buylocalgifts

To see more comments, check out the replies to this questions on LinkedIn and inSide919:

Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/answers/marketing-sales/advertising-promotion/viral-marketing/MAR_ADP_VMM/756219-548650

inSide919: http://inside919.ning.com/forum/topics/why-buy-local-for-the-holidays

Related post: Five Reasons for Buying Local

Thanks! Martin Brossman http://NCSmallBusinessTranining.com