It is a day supported and endorsed by the Roanoke Rapids Main Street Program and all businesses in the district are participating, said Christina Caudle, the city's main street development director.
American Express, which is sponsor of the event, recognized Roanoke Rapids as a Neighborhood Champion, with tote bags, welcome mats and other items that will be given to shoppers who solicit Roanoke Avenue businesses during the day.
Caudle said that for every dollar spent locally, 70 cents stays in the local community. “The people that own businesses here are here seven days a week, they live here and employ people who live here.”
Shopping at chain stores, she said, only contributes 43 cents to the local community.
(The Small Business Center will host a reception for local businesses in celebration of Small Business Saturday. The reception will be held at noon on Tuesday in Building 400, Room 401 A/B. The event is free and open to the public.)
The day will allow shoppers to use the hashtag shopsmall — #shopsmall — to upload photos of themselves shopping locally to social media media sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. “We're trying to get people to share what local finds they discover,” Caudle said.
Most of the business should be open no later than 10 a.m. Closing hours will vary among businesses.
Some of those finds may be the discovery of antiques in both the uptown and downtown areas.
One of the partners in Small Business Saturday is Halifax Community College and its Small Business Center, Caudle said.
“Consumers experience multiple advantages in shopping locally—quality goods and services, competitive pricing and excellent customer service—which often lead to a more enjoyable shopping experience while supporting the local charm of Main Street America,” said HCC Small Business Center Director Jerry Edmonds III. Small Business Saturday was founded by American Express in 2010 as a day to celebrate local businesses through the launch of the holiday shopping season.
“The day has since grown into a powerful movement in support of local small businesses that make our community unique,” Caudle said. “Studies have proven time and time again that dollars spent locally stay local. In fact, both Civic Economics and New Economics Foundation Studies have shown that every dollar spent at a locally owned business generates two-to-four times the economic development impacts of a dollar spent on an equivalent non-local business.”
Consumer spending with independent merchants during the 2013 Small Business Saturday neared $5.7 billion according to the results of a survey conducted by the National Federation of Independent Business.
A recent forecast by consulting and financial advising firm Deloitte, indicates that holiday shopping sales are expected to increase by as much as 4.5 percent in the 2014 season, with sales expecting to total between $981 and $986 billion.
“Small Business Saturday is significant as one of the busiest shopping periods of the year. As Main Street businesses are the fabric of our daily lives, we can give local entrepreneurs the ability to create jobs and boost the economy,” said SBA North Carolina District Director Lynn Douthett.
Sixty million workers in the United States are employed by small business, accounting for approximately half of the private sector workforce.
The SBA reports that small businesses were also the driving force for 63 percent of new net private sector jobs created between 1993 and mid-2013. Forty-seven percent of the workforce in North Carolina is employed in a small business setting.
