Today is the first ever Small Business Saturday, a day to remember that small businesses, shops and restaurants are the local economic engine of our communities.
Today is a great day to honor those shops and restaurants that make our neighborhood so interesting, help our neighbors and reinvest our money close to home.
I don’t have to tell you that local businesses like the Community Bookstore, Lolli, Scaredy Kat, Diana Kane, Cog and Wheel, Brooklyn Mercantile, Stitch Therapy, Urban Alchemist, The Clay Pot, Bird, City Casuals, Kiwi, Lisa Polansky, Loom…the list goes on and on (and I will add as the day progresses) are part of what makes Park Slope and other Brooklyn neighborhoods such fun places to be.
So before you go online or into a big, huge store think about spending your money right here in your own backyard. You’ve heard that statistic, for every $100 spent nearby, that’s $68 invested back into the community.
That’s one of four good reasons to support small and local. The other three are these (info from the Small Business Saturday website)
–Small businesses employ half of all private sector employees.
–Small businesses represent 99.7% of all employer firms.
–For every year over the last decade, 60-80% of new jobs was generated by small business.
A little sidebar here, most small business is adversly affected by the estate tax. So when “folks” like Bill Gates & Al Gore tell you the estate tax is fair and needed, go ask your local small business owner what they think. Especially if they live in a high cost real estate market (NYC) and own a home.