A coming Holiday Campaign for Local and Independent Businesses

[somlocal1st.livejournal.com]

 Somerville Local First is planning a holiday campaign to encourage residents and community members to buy local for the holiday season.

What type of events and campaign elements would encourage and enable you to buy more from local businesses this holiday season?  

We'd love your thoughts and feedback as we construct the campaign.

Thanks,
Somerville Local First 

Comments

[turil.livejournal.com]

If local businesses created temp jobs, and hired local contractors, and bought/sold more local goods, us locals would have more money to buy more local goods! :-)

How about local stored hiring local folks to do bicycle delivery for shoppers who want to call up and order something? Or hiring local folks to do in-store gift wrapping? Or hiring local artists to design signs, posters, post cards, and displays for the stores? How about pledging to carry at least 50% locally created products in your store? The more money the local businesses put back into the local economy, the more the local economy will put back into the local businesses. :-)

Exactly.

[nvidia99999.livejournal.com]

Plus, if local stores charge significantly more than other stores, I'm not buying local. Why should I? Local stores should be rated based on how many local jobs they create. I'd be happy to sponsor stores that create such jobs, as turil says.

Re: Exactly.

[ron_newman]

You sort of contradict yourself here, saying on the one hand that you only care about price, and on the other that job creation matters.

[ron_newman]

Ideally, bicycle delivery should use the services of another Somerville Local business: Metro Pedal Power

[turil.livejournal.com]

Ideally, there would be many options! :-) MetroPed are great for larger deliveries, as they have those large electric trikes. Smaller deliveries are great for an ordinary bike, which can get around faster. (Though MetroPed might have more courier type bikers too, I'm not sure.)

But no matter who you hire to do your bike delivery business, it's going to make the local economy better.