Puffin West is proud to be a grant underwriter for the work that The Small Business Beanstalk is doing. This is why we urge everyoe to support them and become a member store, supporter or patron!
* BE UNCHAINED Shopping locally keeps money in your local economy – dollars spent in locally-owned business have up to three times the impact on the community as those spent at corporate chains. There is a strong multiplier effect within the community for every dollar spent locally. Every dollar that a community member spends outside the community diminishes the economic health of the community.
*BE A LOCAL NOT A CLONE Shopping at local stores makes them a destination for socializing. A healthy retail sector is attractive to new businesses. Without it, communities do not stand much of a chance of attracting new businesses that increase the variety of products and services available for purchase. Shopping locally increasing the diversity of our communities. It helps them retain their uniqueness and authenticity and encourages local innovation and creativity.
*BE PROUD Reach out, raise awareness, take pride in your community. It is about what makes your hometown a unique and interesting place to live, grow, love and prosper.
* BE SMART With increasing job-loss and a shrinking labor market, supporting local businesses by shopping locally helps fund and maintain jobs in the area preventing outsourcing and the outflow of economic wealth. By shifting even 10% of your spending from Big Box Stores to locally owned stores would add over 200,000 million dollars annually to the local economy and create over 2000 jobs**(** based upon the 2008 Grand Rapids Study)
*BE INDEPENDENT Independent area businesses pay more local and state/provincial/regional taxes than do mega-corporations, keeping the tax flow community-based. By contrast, chains can actually drain tax revenue from communities when governments hand out millions in subsidies and tax abatements to national businesses, nominally in the interest of “job-creation.”
*BE CONSCIOUS Local owners are typically more invested in thoughtful, livable urban planning for their communities, and their stores often require less physical space than corporate chains in suburban shopping centers. By creating cohesive city and town centers, pollution, automobile-dependency and urban sprawl can all be reduced. Thriving local shops reduce fuel consumption. The less distance consumer products have traveled the greater the benefits are to the environment due to the reduction and/or elimination of storage and transportation costs. In the case of food the less distance traveled from farm to plate, the fresher it is and the greater the benefits are to the environment and the less it costs to bring products to market.
* BE STRONG Local ownership means that important decisions are made locally by people who live in the community and who will feel the impacts of those decisions. Local businesses help build strong communities and neighborhoods, linking citizens and nurturing local causes. When businesses are owned by members of the community, the owners have obvious reasons for more strongly and insightfully considering the impacts of important decisions about growth and local politics.
* BE UNIQUE Giant multinational companies thwart options and competitive pricing and are tediously and monotonously uniform. * BE IN THE KNOW. Local businesses can offer a more refined expertise and base of knowledge about their product, especially if it is also locally-made. Local groceries specialize in knowing how and where their foods were made and how to cook and eat them – knowledge that benefits the consumer. Purchasing from local farmers helps keep them in business and places ethically grown fresh food on our tables. NICHE IS NICE
815 North High Street, Suite DD
Columbus, Ohio 43215
Tele (614) 859-9722
Fax (678) 693-9711
info@thesbb.com
