Local vs.Chains

Why support Local Businesses?

 1. Local Character & Prosperity  In an increasingly homogenized world, communities that preserve their one-of-a-kind businesses and distinctive character have an economic advantage.

2.  Community Well-Being  Locally owned businesses build strong communities by sustaining vibrant town centers, linking neighbors in a web of economic and social relationships, and contributing to local causes.

3. Local Decision-Making  Local ownership ensures that important decisions are made locally by people who live in the community and who will feel the impacts of those decisions.

4.  Keeping Dollars in the Local Economy  Compared to chain stores, locally owned businesses recycle a much larger share of their revenue back into the local economy, enriching the whole community.

5.  Job and Wages  Locally owned businesses create more jobs locally and, in some sectors, provide better wages and benefits than chains do.

6.  Entrepreneurship  Entrepreneurship fuels America's economic innovation and prosperity, and serves as a key means for families to move out of low-wage jobs and into the middle class.

7.  Public Benefits and Costs  Local stores in town centers require comparatively little infrastructure and make more efficient use of public services relative to big box stores and strip shopping malls.

8.  Environmental Sustainability  Local stores help to sustain vibrant, compact, walkable town centers-which in turn are essential to reducing sprawl, automobile use, habitat loss, and air and water pollution.

9.  Competition  A marketplace of tens of thousands of small businesses is the best way to ensure innovation and low prices over the long-term.

10.  Product Diversity  A multitude of small businesses, each selecting products based, not on a national sales plan, but on their own interests and the needs of their local customers, guarantees a much broader range of product choices.

• If every family in the country spent just $10 a month with a locally-owned, independent business instead of a national chain store, over $9.3 billion would be directly returned to local economies. That means better schools, better roads, more support for police, fire and rescue departments and stronger local economies.
• Small businesses employ over half of all U.S. workers
• Small businesses account for 75%of all new jobs in this country
• Local businesses reinvest in the local economy 60% more than chains
• 53.3 percent of revenue of locally owned big business stayed in the state, with 44.6 percent of that remaining local and 8.7 percent of it spread statewide. However, less than 15 percent of big-box retailer revenue remained in the state, and what did consisted mainly of low-income wages and minimal taxes.