If you want your local detailing business to grow; Support other local and USA based businesses!

My good friend Joe sent me an email this morning that made me think...the message within Joe's email was "buy American" and I am a huge fan of that movement. I hate Walmart...so that message played even more on my years...I hate teh big box store's as they rob from the little guys who run the local harware stores...and I hate that so much of the crap within the big guys stores are imported.

Then, right after I opened Joe's email, Tom Shay sent me an email talking about how buying within your locally owned stores and businesses can help your own business and I knew I had to post some interesting facts about not just buying local, but buying at your local Mom & Pop stores and businesses!

Here are some interesting facts:

• Spend a dollar with a local business and sixty cents will stay in the community. That same dollar spent with a chain store means only twenty cents stays in the community; spent with the box store and only six cents stays locally.
• Another report says a dollar spent at a locally owned store is usually spent 6 to 15 times before it leaves the community. From $1, you create $5 to $14 in value within that community. Spend $1 at a national chain store, and 80% leaves town immediately.
• One more bit of information: For every square foot occupied by a local firm, the impact on the local economy is $179. Yet that same square foot occupied by a chain firm results in a local impact of only $105; a difference of $74 per square foot!
• This study examined financial data from 15 locally owned businesses in New Orleans and compared their impact on the local economy to that of an average SuperTarget store. The study found that only 16% of the money spent at a SuperTarget stays in the local economy. In contrast, the local retailers returned more than 32% of their revenue to the local economy. The primary difference was that the local stores purchase many goods and services from other local businesses, while Target does not. The study concludes that even modest shifts in spending patterns can make a big difference to the local economy. If residents and visitors were to shift 10% of their spending from chains to local businesses, it would generate an additional $235 million a year in local economic activity, creating many new opportunities and jobs. Likewise, a 10% shift in the opposite direction - less spending at local stores and more at chains - would lead to an economic contraction of the same magnitude. Another noteworthy finding of the study is that locally owned businesses require far less land to produce an equivalent amount of economic activity. The study found that a four-block stretch of Magazine Street, a traditional business district, provides 179,000 square feet of retail space, hosts about 100 individual businesses, and generates $105 million in sales, with $34 million remaining in the local economy. In contrast, a 179,000-square-foot SuperTarget generates $50 million in annual sales, with just $8 million remaining in the local economy, and requires an additional 300,000 square feet of space for its parking lot.
  

So do you desire your detailing business to be supported locally? Of course you do but you need to make a real effort to strongly support your fellow small business owners!