Small Business Saturday (SBS), the day to support your local businesses and economy, turns 10 years old today.
American Express started SBS on November 27, 2010, trying to give small businesses more exposure during the Christmas shopping season.
The first main exposure people got to this new day was on social media in 2010. American Express promoted SBS on Facebook and Twitter where it saw saw over 1 million Facebook likes about SBS and over 30,000 Twitter profiles using the hashtag “#SmallBusinessSaturday.”
A year later, SBS gained more credibility as a day to shop when officials in Washington state and President Barack Obama offered support for it. Furthermore, the United States Senate passed a resolution in support of the day.
In 2012, Americans spent $5.5 billion at locally owned businesses. Three years later, this number nearly tripled to $16.2 billion. On the SBS’s sixth year anniversary, over 95 million people shopped at local small businesses. Last year, people spent a record $17.8 billion on SBS.
This year, the National Retail Federation expects almost 70 million people to shop today.
According to American Express, people have spent over $103 billion on the nine days so far.
This day is a big boost to over 30 million American small business owners who employ almost half of all workers.
Here are some benefits of shopping on SBS to your local economy:
- If you spend $100 at a local business, $68 will stay in the area’s local economy compared to $43 to if you buy items from a non-local business.
- Small businesses are 250 percent more likely than larger businesses to donate to “nonprofits and community causes.”
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Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of Battleground State News. If you have any tips, email Zachery at [email protected].
