Local independent retailers in Columbus and Hope are gearing up for their biggest shopping day of the year, hoping that customers today will opt to “shop small” on a retail holiday wedged between Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Small Business Saturday, which is now in its 10th iteration, was created by American Express in an effort to encourage people to shop at local small businesses, which have faced increasing competition from online and large national retail chains in recent years.
The retail holiday is held the Saturday after Thanksgiving. An estimated 104 million shoppers across the country spent $17.8 billion on Small Business Saturday last year, according to American Express and the National Federation of Independent Business.
Alisa Doty, co-owner of Days of Old Antique Shoppe, located at 3850 25th St. with her husband, said Small Business Saturday is “really important for us.”
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“It’s a big weekend for us,” she said. “But we definitely have to try to draw the business in. It usually works out really well for us.”
Though Days of Old Antique Shoppe was founded in 2016, Doty and her husband, David, moved their business into the space at Holiday Center that used to house Rustic Village and adopted a similar business model, with more than 100 individual vendors renting booths at the store, Alisa Doty said.
“We always hope to be able to compete a little bit,” Alisa Doty said. “We know we can’t always compete with big box stores on Black Friday weekend. We usually try to ramp things up and help entice people as they’re out buying their electronics and toys.”
Local small businesses play an important role in building vibrant communities, and around 67 cents of every dollar spent at a small business stays in the local community, according to a 2018 study by the National Federation of Independent Businesses.
The retail landscape, however, has evolved over the past several years, pitting some large online retailers against small brick-and-mortar businesses.
During the October-December quarter of 2010, 4.6% of retail sales in the United States were made online, according to online statistics database Statista. During the same quarter last year, that number had jumped to 10.1%.
Though many small business make online sales, Amazon dominates the U.S. e-commerce retail market, with an estimated 41% market share in 2018, according to Statista.
But for many local small business owners, like Tom Dell, co-owner of Dell Brothers, a men’s clothing store located at 416 Washington St., competition is nothing new.
“We’re all out there competing for the same amount of dollars, but it’s not all that different than the competition that my dad or grandpa faced,” Dell said. “…Competition has been around for years.”
Dell, whose family has owned Dell Brothers for over 100 years, said while the rise of online retail is relatively new, Dell Brothers had to compete against national catalogs, like the Sears Catalog, in the past.
However, Dell said he is “comfortable” competing with larger retailers and that Small Business Saturday is a special day for many businesses like his.
“The day is kind of a special day for what people would consider mom-and-pop, Main Street type of businesses, small privately owned business,” Dell said. “…It’s a great opportunity on the national scale to highlight the value that (these companies) provide for a community.”
For Beth Stroh, co-owner of Viewpoint Books, located at 548 Washington St., Small Business Saturday also is an opportunity to highlight what makes local businesses unique.
“We are selling books that are very specific to the community, local things are highlighted, like the history of Columbus High School,” Stroh said. “You can’t get those from an online retailer, but you can here at Viewpoint. I think that local flavor and a local commitment and the fact that we make donations to groups in our community. That’s not something Amazon does. That’s also what makes it special when you go local.”
Despite the competition, local business owners said they are optimistic, especially this time of year.
“I had a conversation with somebody the other day who compared downtown businesses to craft beers,” Stroh said. “I’m not a beer drinker, but I think that is a really good analogy. We’re the ones investing in creating a flavor and distinction that’s unique. We just hope that people recognize that we’re part of the community they’re part of.”
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Small Business Saturday is a retail holiday that was created in 2010 by American Express in an effort to encourage people to shop at local small businesses.
Several small businesses in Columbus, as well as some businesses along Hope Town Square, will celebrate the retail holiday today.
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