This year, you can support your community, make your home safer for your family and improve the health of our environment all at the same time when you shop Norwex products with a local independent Norwex consultant like me.
Shopping with local businesses like mine strengthens the local economy — which directly affects you and the investments you’ve made in your community.
Among the reasons to shop local first
Significantly more money recirculates in your community, Take 1. When you shop local, more money stays local because local businesses and consumers often purchase from other businesses and service providers close to home.
In one study commissioned by the Andersonville Development Corporation in Chicago, researchers found that locally owned businesses generated 70 percent more local economic impact per square foot than chains stores. The study analyzed 10 locally owned restaurants, retail stores and service providers in Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood and compared them with 10 national chains competing in the same business sectors. They found that $100 spent at one of the neighborhood’s independent businesses created $68 in additional local economic activity, while spending $100 at a chain resulted in only $43 of local impact. Researchers also reported that local businesses generated slightly more sales per square foot than chains ($263 versus $243). Because chains send more of their revenue out of the local economy, the study concluded that for every square foot of space occupied by a chain, the local economic impact was $105, compared to $179 for every square foot occupied by an independent business.
Significantly more money recirculates in your community, Take 2. Nonprofits directly affecting your immediate surroundings receive greater financial support from local business owners (some studies show nearly four times more money) than from non-locally owned businesses.
Most new jobs are provided by locally owned businesses. Small, locally owned businesses are the largest employers nationally.
You’ll put your community’s tax dollars to better use. Locally owned businesses typically require (and demand) little to no public infrastructure investments and need for public services at the same time they add to the local tax base. And when they add to the local tax base, these locally owned businesses also create jobs for teachers, firemen, police officers and many other trades and professions from which you directly benefit.
You create more choice for consumers. Locally owned businesses may carry smaller inventories, but they also typically offer a wider array of unique products that can meet the more specific and discerning tastes of their local customers. A marketplace with many small, competitive businesses will help ensure innovation and lower prices for customers over the long term.
You receive better customer service. Because of their often more sophisticated and diverse product and service inventories and the deep personal investments they have made in their community, local business owners often have, and hire people with, specific expertise that results in more personalized and better customer service for you. When people who live near shop with me, I can get to know their specific cleaning and household needs and make especially good recommendations for them.
You reduce your impact on the environment. When you buy from local businesses, you often support operations that require less transportation and packaging and have less negative impact on natural resources and the environment. And when you buy Norwex, you’re definitely helping to improve the environment. Check out our eco-friendly cleaning, household and personal care products.
You help make your community a destination for others. Support for locally owned businesses helps to build a vibrant, interesting and compelling community that attracts new neighbors and visitors — all of whom spend money, too. More economic research also is showing that entrepreneurs and skilled workers are more likely to live in communities that value one-of-a-kind businesses.
How else does shopping locally first strengthen individuals and communities? I welcome hearing your ideas.
