Small Business Saturday: marketing for good
Sometimes crass capitalism just makes good sense.
I grew up at a time when the term “Black Friday” entered the common holiday vernacular. As a teenager and young (college-age) adult I would peruse my parents’ Thanksgiving Day copy of The Blade and see just which stores were breaching the previous limits on oh-dark hundred opening - 7 a.m. quickly became 6 a.m. then eventually 5 a.m. and, for some of the electronics and big-box stores, 4 in the morning. (Luckily the department store at which my mom worked was in a mall, so they didn’t necessarily participate in the real early hours. I think 6 or 7 was about as early as they went.) As the years passed by it was Rock Around The Clock run in reverse, and retailers quickly learned a certain class of people was nuts enough to stand in line on a nice, toasty 25-degree Ohio night with the snow flurries flying to get the item that supposedly all the kids wanted.
With the increased affinity for online shopping, though, we don’t see those lines like we used to. But we still have Black Friday as a concept, and it’s been joined by a few other appointed days: Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, and Giving Tuesday. (In this consumerist world, I guess Church Sunday doesn’t make the cut.) Regardless, in this go-round I’m interested in Small Business Saturday.
Once I read up on the history of Small Business Saturday, I vaguely remembered some of the details since it wasn’t all that long ago: just like we have a slew of what are called “Hallmark holidays” that were intended to pump up greeting card sales, Small Business Saturday was created in 2010 by American Express to promote usage of their credit card (and a lot of small businesses that use it for their financial purposes) at a time when the economy was slowly crawling out of the Great Recession.
But America has taken that concept and ran with it to the extent that a number of brick-and-mortar small businesses (which may not have standard weekend hours) take the time to open up for the day, a date that has become “their” day on the holiday shopping calendar. In the mind of this writer, it’s a nice bookend to an unintentional, semi-consecutive series of posts I’ve done this month.
Maybe I’m just into that idea this month, because I can even throw in a link to the newest rendition of the Made in USA Holiday Gift Guide I alluded to in the first post. (Keeping up tradition in my new home.) Delaware must be lagging behind in small business creation because the Alliance for American Manufacturing had to recycle a business they used before to represent the First State.
But when you think about small business as a concept, its beauty is in the ability to be scaled. There are some small businesses out there that were always intended to be side hustles to make money for nice extras to supplement the necessities for running a family, and there are many whose goal is to be the stepping stone to someday becoming a big business: think of the original store opened up by Sam Walton or the first Starbucks. Then there are others who are generally happy to serve the public but want to keep things at a manageable size - enough to make a comfortable living doing what they love and intended to be their primary avocation. Examples would be the guy who follows his desire to open his own restaurant, or my small group leader who is a potter - he’s also following his dream after a long career in sales. If I were to describe my Substack as a business - with a paying subscription option the choice is there for me down the road - that would be the category I would place it in.
Between the two larger towns closest to my home, Laurel and Seaford, there is one Walmart, a Lowe’s, a couple of Food Lions, and maybe a handful of chain and fast food restaurants along U.S. 13. If I go a bit farther across the state line to Salisbury, Maryland, I can find a Walmart, Sam’s Club, Target, and an actual shopping mall on our end of town along with most of those same big chain eateries and a few more.
But small towns across the country are also home to a lot of local businesses that have figured out a formula to compete with these behemoths, a formula that usually involves one or more of the following: unique, non-mass produced items, superior service (often from the owner), and better quality products. That’s not to say it’s an easy path to success: after all, for every high profile business failure like a Sears/KMart or a Chi-Chi’s (a pioneer in the casual dining concept), there are thousands of little mom-and-pop shops that close one day and never reopen their doors. You might notice a month later when you need that thingamajig you’d been planning to buy or had a hankering for their special panini, but then it’s too late. So you may want to get while the getting is good.
If you like my take on all this, hit the button above. I would appreciate it. And if those who already subscribe would take a moment to select some of their friends who they think agree, “you’ll like what this guy has to say,” I’d love you for that, too. Help make my prospective small business a success, too - I’m putting the work in for the benefit of all of us.
Programming note: Since I’m already chopping up next week for a special Thursday post, I may try something new to enhance participation on Monday and skip my usual Wednesday post. Stay tuned.