A lot of people make New Year’s Resolutions. There’s a good chance you made one. Or many. There is a good chance you’ve already broken them.
But we at Locally Epic want you to consider one more resolution that if you keep, can change the face of the local economy.
We want you to buy local. Go to the homegrown store for hardware. Buy a painting from a local artist. Buy a shirt at the local store and not online. We are not asking you to spend more money. Just take what you are spending now online and go to a locally owned shop. If Upstate consumers pivot $20 a week away for a year from online or a big box store to a locally owned store that would in increase the local Upstate economy by $300 million.
How is that possible?
For every dollar you spend in a Greenville-based business, 75 cents stays right here in Greenville. Even if you’re shopping at a Woodruff Road big box (and we all do, right?), 35 cents of every buck you spend stays local. In either case, that’s cash that flows through local employees, managers and owners and into other local businesses such as grocery stores and gas stations.
Compare that scenario to this: For every dollar you spend with non-local online businesses, only one cent remains in the local economy. One penny, vs. the 99 that won’t stay here. So in the bigger picture, what’s your buck worth online vs. locally – what’s it worth to you?
But let’s take that resolution to spend local a little further. What if you chose one day a month to do nothing, but purchase locally. Imagine that. Imagine the change you could make. And that is our Locally Epic challenge to you.
Every fourth Saturday of the month, just go and buy local. Now, you may be saying “that’s nice, but I getter deals online or at the big box store.” That is where the Locally Epic app comes into play. Every day, more than 35,000 users in Greenville are finding deals and promotions from local businesses. These are real savings done in real-time via Locally Epic.
We are calling it Locally Epic Saturday, and you will be hearing a lot about it. The ideas it to take the concept of Small Business Saturday, which everyone does in December, and spread it throughout the year. We are creating value.
And value takes us back to those concepts of quality of life, being fortunate enough to live in the Greenville area, and that buck that I hope is still burning a hole in your pocket. It’s your buck, and it’s your choice, but before you spend it, I do hope you’ll consider that every dollar you spend represents your opportunity to have a positive economic impact on our region and the Greenville lifestyle we’ve come to enjoy and, yes — value.
