#ShopSmall

The initiative Shop Small Business was founded by American Express in 2010. The event is a day titled Shop Small Business Saturday in November, the day after “Black Friday”. The idea behind this initiative is to support smaller businesses, thereby preventing them from going out of business due to their lack of funds to compete with huge corporation. After the day was established in 2010, within a year it was recognized by the government as the United States Senate unanimously passed the resolution to support Small Business Saturday. Following that in 2012, every single state in the country (and Washington D.C. wholeheartedly supported this initiative. In fact the website for this initiative states that “from Washington D.C., to Washington State, governors, mayors, and even President Obama championed Small Business Saturday.” In 2014 the idea took off with an estimated 14.3 billion dollars be spent in small businesses on that day alone thanks to the movement. Then last year in 2015, 95 million shoppers shopped locally on that day.

Small businesses are still considered the backbone of America and thus need to be nurtured and protected or else they will become a part of American history. This initiative I consider successful because of how much revenue, people, & governments stand behind it. The idea was simple, just getting people to shop locally instead of at huge corporations for at least one day out of the year and from that, it spread and became statistically one of the largest movements (as stated in the brief history above). What also made me believe that this movement is successful is because it has garnered support from the government at all different levels from federal down to local community municipalities. That signifies that so many people and store owners took notice of this movement that it then received the proper attention.

The social media aspect of this campaign is also extensive as they re on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and showcase messages from partakers, as well as pictures/videos from people who are shopping local. All in all, this campaign started out as an idea from a credit card banking company and grew into an actual nationally recognized holiday. Now one could argue that the campaign being back by a well known and financially superior company helps spread the information, but I believe that the willingness of people to go out and shop small is the true reason the idea spread as quickly as it has.