Local businesses need our support
We need thriving local businesses to keep our towns vibrant, employ locals, support local events and provide us with the goods and services we want.
We’re showing our support by introducing our Support Local, Aotearoa page allowing local businesses to make sure local customers know their business is open and safely trading within Covid level restrictions.
This is the way great communities pull together, helping each other.
During last year’s Covid-19 restrictions our local business owners showed initiative, hard work and resilience to keep afloat.
We know how vital they are to our towns and communities.
They help our local shopping strips feel like vibrant hubs for our community, where we meet friends or pick up a coffee.
So we rallied behind them and made sure we shopped local.
But shopping local is about more than the product or service you buy. It’s even bigger than supporting an individual business.
It’s about keeping the money you spend in the local economy, and keeping it working to help us all, instead of being siphoned out of our area through online companies and big businesses that aren’t locally owned, aren’t employing local people, and aren’t spending themselves locally.
A rule of thumb is that spending money with a local business will see this money on average circulate to six more businesses within the community, including supporting community and sporting groups.
It is what is called the Local Premium – a real and measurable advantage to an area by having locally owned businesses.
One USA study by the Michigan State University found four ways in which local businesses benefited their communities:
■ Wages and benefits paid to local residents
■ Profits earned by local owners
■ The purchases of local goods and services for resale and internal use
■ Contributions to local nonprofits.
We all know it’s local businesses who are generous sponsors of local events, clubs and charities.
Sustainable Connections is another US organisation which is dedicated to supporting local communities. As it says: ‘‘Keep your money where your heart lives, support an economy of friends and neighbours, and build a community that thrives by thinking local first.’’ Among its finding are:
■ Shopping local reduces environmental impacts
■ Residents of neighbourhoods with more local businesses log 26 per cent less automobile kilometres
■ Local businesses donate almost 250 per cent more to local charitable causes than non-local businesses
■ Small businesses that select product based on their own interests and the needs of their local customers provide a broader range of choices and prices
■ Entrepreneurs and skilled workers are more likely to invest and live in communities that promote distinctive, local businesses that bring character to an area.
So let’s Support Local, Aotearoa.