This Saturday, Aurora will join thousands of other communities around the country in the annual Shop Local Saturday.
The national program that began in 2010 aims at getting consumers to support local businesses in order to make them and their communities vibrant and more profitable.
Here in Aurora, Maureen Gasek, director of Events and Marketing for the Aurora Regional Chamber of Commerce, said this was the fourth year the Chamber was backing the program and that “at least two dozen local shops would be participating this year.”
“This program keeps the local sales tax here as well as supporting the community and making the local businesses more profitable,” Gasek said. “Stores will be offering their own promotions which could include sales or special items, or certain dollar amounts of credit when you shop again in that store and spend a certain amount.”
Gasek added that studies have shown that locally spent dollars return more to the community than just sales tax.
“When you spend $100 locally, a total of $68 of that comes back to the community, whereas if you spend that money at a big box retailer, only $43 of it comes back,” she said. “I try to buy 95 -percent of what I consume locally, and when we you add in the customer service, the community relations that are built, and the fact you are shopping with other people which is more fun than being alone – buying locally makes a lot of sense.”
Marissa Amoni, who works with the Downtown Aurora association, said “Aurora is just a great place to shop locally” and that she hopes many shoppers will be out this Saturday “to support local people in the Fox Valley area.”
“We’ve supported this effort pretty much since its inception, and we feel with the dress boutiques, jewelry stores, the cafes and restaurants as well as the success of the Paramount Theater and the Riverfront Playhouse that there is a lot more synergy in the area, especially with all the new artists that have come in,” Amoni said.
Like Gasek, Amoni said supporting small local businesses helps improve the local community.
“Small businesses and supporting them is important because more of the money spent locally stays here and that helps further amenities like schools and roads,” she said. “A lot of the people that own these stores live right here and we want to keep them in the downtown.”
David Sharos is a freelance writer for The Beacon-News
