Sidewalk Ballerina

Why Support Locally Owned Businesses?

Local Character and Prosperity
In an increasingly homogenized world, communities thatpreserve their one-of-a-kind businesses and distinctive character have an economic advantage.

Community Well-Being
Locally owned businesses build strong communities by sustainingvibrant town centers, linking neighbors in a web of economic and social relationships, andcontributing to local causes.

Local Decision-Making
Local ownership ensures that important decisions are made locally bypeople who live in the community and who will feel the impacts of those decisions.

Keeping Dollars in the Local Economy
Compared to chain stores, locally ownedbusinesses recycle a much larger share of their revenue back into the local economy, enrichingthe whole community.

Jobs and Wages
Locally owned businessescreate more jobs locally and, in some sectors,provide better wages and benefits than chains do.

Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship fuelsAmerica’s economic innovation and prosperity, andserves as a key means for families to move out oflow-wage jobs and into the middle class.

Public Benefits and Costs
Local stores intown centers require comparatively littleinfrastructure and make more efficient use ofpublic services relative to big box stores and stripshopping malls.

Environmental Sustainability
Local stores help to sustain vibrant, compact, walkable towncenters-which in turn are essential to reducing sprawl, automobile use, habitat loss, and air andwater pollution.

Competition
A marketplace of tens of thousands of small businesses is the best way to ensureinnovation and low prices over the long-term.

Product Diversity
A multitude of small businesses, each selecting products based, not on anational sales plan, but on their own interests and the needs of their local customers, guaranteesa much broader range of product choices.