As the holiday season is quickly approaching, I felt the urge to bring awareness to how important it is to SHOP LOCAL & SHOP SMALL! I feel it’s our duty, as a fellow small local business, to make it known “BUY Local or BYE Local”!

It’s no secret, but I feel it’s always the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about, but small local businesses are a dying breed! We are ALL feeling it. This past year has been really hard on small brick and mortar shops. No matter how great something looks from the outside, trust me, there is a lot more going on behind the scenes that you don’t realize. In the hustle and bustle of life in general, local businesses are being pushed to the back burner and skipped over, thanks in large part to the ease of online shopping.

I get it, you click a button and whatever you want can be purchased and shipped within seconds. That’s amazing. We’ve come a long way with technology. But, what you can’t get online is that personable, one on one experience that you can with your local shops and businesses. When you call us, we don’t need you to press 1 for English. We don’t make you listen to automated music while you’re on hold. We don’t give you a list of options that you need to choose from so we can direct your call, only to be hung up on during the cycle. You don’t have to e-mail customer service and hope for a response. When you do shop us, we’re here for you. At almost any given time, an owner is readily available and willing to help. We answer your calls with a real-life person, not a robot. We personally respond to e-mails, social media messages, text messages, etc. You can walk in our stores and touch our goods & products, knowing firsthand the quality of what you are purchasing. You can spend hours in our stores picking our brains. You can visit as much or as little as you’d like, being the first to be able to check out new merchandise when it first hits the floor.

One of the biggest advantages to shopping local and shopping small, is the relationships we all form with each other. You can’t bond with the operator over in California, but you can bond with the girl behind the counter at your favorite furniture store. At Salvaged, we can personally relate to this. Over the years, we have formed countless friendships with our customers. They have celebrated in our successes. They have encouraged and supported us through each new endeavor we embark on. They have brought us gifts on our birthdays. They have even brought us home cooked meals when we’ve been dealing with a death in our family and can’t seem to get our feet back on the ground. It’s not just business for us, it is personal.

Because we appreciate our customers so much and because we are a small local business, we have the amazing opportunity to give back to these customers and the community. Something that online shopping can never do for you. We are consistently working hard to make sure all of our customers feel important and appreciated, because we need them to know how thankful we are that they choose to shop local. We are always planning special events with incredible discounts and promotions. At our events, we always have food and wine in hopes of making our customers feel at home and relaxed so they will enjoy their time with us, whether they are buying or not. During our large holiday events, we are always offering a special gift for those who are willing to donate monetary or non-perishable food donations for local organizations and charities. Recently we even began a “Heroes Advantage Discount” program which gives any “designated hero” an automatic 10% off their entire purchase! At Salvaged, we strive to go above and beyond to make sure our customers know their business is sincerely appreciated.

All that being said, we aren’t oblivious to the downside of shopping local either. We know there are some slight disadvantages. It seems our prices are typically higher. There are normally more hiccups with a small business, also. When there are only a few people on the team, sometimes things get lost in the mix and forgotten about. Many fellow small, local businesses have “All Sales Final” policies, so no returning or exchanging allowed if something doesn’t work. Sometimes we run out of products and we are waiting on another shipment. We get it. We just hope that you see more value in the advantages of shopping local and shopping small than the downside.

The point I’m trying to get across is that everyone is entitled to make their own decisions when spending their own money. But, we hope that as our economy is still trying to make a come-back, hopefully more of you will decide to spend your money local. If money isn’t put back into your local community, we all cease to thrive. Whether it’s local shops, local restaurants, local businesses- it all matters and we all depend on you, our customers. The majority of us are just small-town, home-grown, local families trying to make a living day by day. We don’t live in big fancy houses. We don’t go on far away, expensive vacations. (Hell, I just took my first 2 day vacation in over 7 years!) We don’t get to boss around hundreds of employees to meet their goals so that we can get our six figure bonus. We are just trying to live out our dreams. Whether it’s being creative, making delicious food, or offering a unique service. We work tirelessly from sun up to sun down, 24/7 to try and keep our businesses going. It’s harder every day to compete with big chain stores and businesses. So, not only during the holiday season, but every day, we encourage you to SHOP LOCAL! Always push your friends and family to do so as well. Spending money locally is money well spent, whenever and wherever!