Shoppers venture out for Small Business Saturday

Smyrna entrepreneurs welcome event that promotes buying local.

Bobby Young opened his sporting goods business in March 2020, about a week before he had to shut down at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in Georgia.

This year, Young said he hopes customers’ desire to keep their shopping local will extend past Small Business Saturday and keep them coming back to FullScope Sports in Smyrna year-round.

“We want to be your neighborhood running and sporting goods store,” Young said, adding that the store fits running shoes as well as provides sporting equipment to young athletes. “We want to be ingrained and when people think ‘I need this (sporting good),’ they may come right down the street here.”

Small Business Saturday was created in 2010 by credit card giant American Express and has become a fixture of the holiday shopping weekend.

Almost the opposite of Black Friday — the after-Thanksgiving day people flock to big-box retailers or buy online for advertised deals — Small Business Saturday celebrates local entrepreneurs and small businesses.

Across the state, small business owners offered sales and special events around the day focused on bringing customers to locally owned establishments.

In Cobb County, the Smyrna Business Association uses the event to urge neighbors to visit the city’s brick-and-mortar shops — whether they’re a mom-and-pop store or a franchise of a larger company. This is the second time they’ve held Shop Smyrna Saturday, said Smyrna Business Association President Sara Sorenson.

This year, organizers hoped to increase foot traffic by offering three $100 gift cards that will be raffled off to those who visited one of the 16 participating businesses and scanned the business’ QR code.

“The goal is to draw people to recognize and know our local businesses and to spend money at the start of the holiday season and all holiday season long at local businesses and keep that money in the community,” said Sorenson, who owns a law practice in Smyrna.

The “shop local” day also comes before Cyber Monday, an annual promotion designed to encourage holiday shoppers to buy online.

An average of 67 cents of every dollar spent at a small business stays in the local community, according to the 2018 Small Business Economic Impact Study from American Express. In a separate 2018 study, the National Federation of Independent Businesses and American Express found that roughly 90% of consumers believe it’s more important than ever to support local retailers.

Americans spent about $20 billion on Small Business Saturday last year, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration, up slightly from the year before.

However, this time last year, spending in Georgia was down about 8.8% compared to the beginning of the pandemic, according to an economic tracker run by Harvard University. Georgians are spending 22.1% more than they were at the beginning of the pandemic, as of Nov. 14.

Katy Nichols, a Smyrna resident, stopped by AR Workshop in Smyrna to make ornaments with family members who are in town visiting for Thanksgiving. It’s the second time the family has made the trip to the do-it-yourself home decor studio.

“This has been a great fun thing for us to do with the family,” she said. “It’s great that Smyrna is finding ways to get people to shop at local businesses.”

STEVE SCHAEFER FOR THE AJC AR Workshop employee Kate Dabson (center) works with Katy Nichols and her son, Hiden, to make decorations at the Smyrna crafts shop during Small Business Saturday, which was started in 2010 and has now become a fixture.