For small businesses in Columbus, it’s about community support — not just sales

Small Business Saturday isn’t about the deals. It’s not about camping out for doorbusters or hovering over the computer with your finger on the “add to cart” button.

“Black Friday is about the deals. Cyber Monday is about the deals,” said Alek Ansley, proprietor of Judy Bug’s Books. “Small Business Saturday is an introduction to how we do things in small business. Every day is a small business Saturday. This is how we live. This is our philosophy.”

That philosophy, Ansley explained, is to be part of a community of support — not to be a faceless building in which to make purchases, but to be somewhere where people will be known, catered to and understood.

“What you would hope is people come here because they think there’s a sale going on, but then they realize that this just goes on at a regular basis, that this is what it is. We’re a community,” Ansley said.

If Saturday’s crowd was any indication, plenty of people seem to like the idea of that philosophy. Hundreds of people were walking streets of downtown, whether they were checking out the deals and specials in local businesses, perusing the food and craft vendors at Market Days or simply strolling along and enjoying the sense of community purpose.

“We’re trying to get foot traffic into all our small businesses in UpTown,” said UpTown, Inc. employee Haley Greene as she passed out free “Shop Small” tote bags. “We’re just trying to get people to shop local. Instead of going to the big box retailers, they shop here.”

That’s exactly what people like Renee Bowles and her friends were doing that morning. “We’re gonna be filling up our bags right after this,” she said, finishing up her cup of coffee from Iron Bank on 11th Street.

Bowles said the small businesses actually know their customers — and it makes the experience so much more personal. “We eat our meals down here, and they remember you!” she said. “I like to call it a ‘framily,’ friends that are family.”

Tiffany Yarbrough, owner of the Kiddie Shoppe on 11th Street, said it really was about showing the personal touch to customers and being there to help them get exactly what they need.

“It’s about telling our customers how much we appreciate them, and them showing us the love as well,” she said. “All of us shop on Amazon — who doesn’t? But its really nice that they can come into a shop like this and we can measure their children for shoes and they can touch and feel the clothes and see the way their child lights up when they see a toy.”

That sense of family (or “framily”) isn’t just between the businesses and their customers. Business owners also pointed to an “awesome” network of support between all the local downtown businesses, too.

“This area is extremely supportive of each other,” Yarbrough said. “It’s nice to just get these people into all these stores down here, and for all of them to know that we’re down here and we all just support each other. Every day we eat at one of the restaurants down here — its just an amazing sense of community.”

Business owners said they often refer customers to other shops — that way, they’re helping both the customers and each other.

“We get a lot of out-of-town business,” said Gene Lively, the owner of Shooter’s Valhalla on 12th Street. “When young men graduate basic training, their families come and ask, where should we go eat, where do we find camping gear, so I always try to refer them to somebody down here, first of all, or at least a locally-owned small business”

“Everyone supports each other around here, and you can see that,” said Bobbi Vaught, assistant manager of Salt Life on Broadway. “You can go in their store and buy stuff, and they’ll come in our store and buy stuff. So we’re supporting each other.”

With small businesses, if you make a $100 purchase, 48 of those dollars would stay right here in town to be used at other businesses or to support local jobs. When shopping at a chain store, less than 14 percent stays in the community, according to research at Civic Economics.

That principle was highlighted by a widely shared video promoting Small Business Saturday, shot by local marketing agency INCOLR. The video shows the cycle of a small bit of money as it makes it way around local businesses in Columbus. A woman uses tips from her shift at a restaurant to purchase a bike, which the bike shop owner uses to purchase a kayak, which the seller of the kayak uses to purchase services from a local auto shop, and so on. The whole time, the money stays right in the community.

“It’s like a big family,” Haley Greene, from UpTown, Inc., said. “The lady from the Posh Peach knows the guy who owns PTAP, everyone knows everyone. Spending money, meeting all kinds of people, it just stays in the community, so with Small Business Saturday we’re just trying to bring awareness to our awesome shops and business owners in Uptown.”

This story was originally published November 26, 2017 at 10:11 AM with the headline "For small businesses in Columbus, it’s about community support — not just sales."