Health & Fitness
Shop SMALL This Saturday
This Saturday is Small Business Saturday, a relatively new but very popular nationwide event. Why should you care?
Thanksgiving is almost here, and with it comes the start of the holiday shopping season. There’s Black Friday, when large amounts of people spend vast amounts of money and extreme amounts of time lining up at retailers to snag the promised low prices on holiday gifts. This week while you’re tweaking your Christmas lists, with visions of deep discounts dancing through your head, kindly remember Saturday, November 24 is Small Business Saturday. This is a day dedicated to showing your support of the businesses that support your community all year long.
Locally owned small businesses are everywhere--we’re ice cream shops, pizza shops, small printing operations, independent restaurants, nail salons, hair salons, dry cleaners, dentists, and the list goes on. Our businesses sponsor your children’s sports teams and donate to your schools. Unlike a corporate-owned retailer, we provide the face-to-face personal service that makes you feel connected, like we’re all in this together. A small business is in a continuous fight for survival amidst a sea of big box stores and chain restaurants. We cannot compete in a price-matching war, and our selection of offerings can never be as extensive. But what we lack in corporate might is more than made up for by what we add in jobs, loyalty, service, community support, and individuality. Have you ever seen a handcrafted necklace available at Target? Have you been able to suggest a specific product offering to Best Buy and seen it in stores the very next week? When you take your child for a free haircut at JCPenney’s, are you immediately recognized and asked how your daughter did at her piano recital
last month?
Consider what your local festivities and events would be like without the small businesses that are so invested in the community. Who would be in the parades without the locally owned merchants and the nonprofit organizations we upport? That’s not to mention all the craft fairs, heritage fests, and holiday events that we participate in. Small businesses are the heart of your community, without them we would be all Wal-mart and Kohl’s with no Yumz or Jersey Mike’s, you get the idea.
Find out what's happening in Algonquin-Lake In The Hillswith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Small Business Saturday is the time to show your support. Visit us on Saturday, November 24. Let us help you prepare for the holidays by printing your cards, helping you select gifts, feeding you a warm meal, and making your family look beautiful. My own business, Sharkey’s Cuts for Kids in Algonquin, invites you to
visit us all season long and will give you 50% off any services on your first
visit, just for trying us out and seeing the difference in service between us
and “the big guys”. Any other small businesses with specials to offer are invited to post them in the comments.