For the love of small businesses

By Michaela MacDonald

We’re pretty big on small businesses at Bimble. It’s the bread and butter of what we do — celebrating the great, little places all over the world that have meaning to their communities.

You know the ones — the local bakery who you swear make the world’s best chocolate chip cookies, the stationery shop where you always find the funniest birthday cards, or the indie bookstore that somehow knows your taste better than you do. The places that really make a neighborhood.

So nothing brings us more joy than to see that recently there’s been a growing trend towards supporting small & local businesses. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the move towards what’s been dubbed ‘shopping small’ has been building for several years but it’s the pandemic that caused a “pivotal” shift in consumer behaviors. More and more Americans are choosing to shop at local and independent businesses and rejecting the malls and big box stores that have dominated since the 1950s. In fact, projections for 2022 show that in the next year, “75% of consumers are planning to shop more locally.” Music to our bimbling ears.

Today is the 12th annual Small Business Saturday in the US, an initiative started in 2010 by a not-so-small business, American Express. Falling in the middle of the biggest shopping weekend of the year, Small Business Saturday began as a way of encouraging shopping locally and reallocating a proportion of the massive commercial holiday spend to small businesses. We don’t miss the irony in the fact that a multinational credit services company

led the charge for shopping small. But we’re down for the groundwork that’s been laid to encourage consumers to support independent businesses across the country, not only over the holiday season but now yearlong. Gotta give credit where credit’s due.

Whilst American Express clearly recognised the huge value of the SMB market 12 years ago, there is still an economic argument for shopping at independents that has more heart and is tangible to small communities around the US and the individuals who live in them. Small businesses consistently reinvest in their communities, with an estimated $0.67 cents of every dollar spent at a small business staying in the local community, when the little guy succeeds, we all do.

We also know that in the light of the pandemic, it’s especially important to reinvest and rebuild in our local communities this holiday season and beyond. Running a small business has never been easy, but the challenges of these last two years have made for an especially difficult time. According to the Associated Press, an extra 200,000 small businesses permanently closed their doors between March 2020 and February 2021, in addition to the approximately 600,000 small business closures annually in the States. For those that survived, many retailers are still playing catchup from lost sales during the pandemic. Seasonal shopping this year may be more important than ever with “78% of small businesses reporting that their holiday sales will impact their ability to stay open in the next year.”

Bigging up a local business

But supporting small shops and independent businesses doesn’t have to and shouldn’t end this weekend. Cue Bimble. The place to find new independents and to celebrate your own favorites well into the new year. We’re confident that we’re the only platform in the world that’s dedicated to creating an entirely positive space for people to share their small business recommendations. We’re creating a culture of paying it forward — both literally and figuratively. Because bigging up local businesses doesn’t stop at purchases. You can share the love online and with your digital communities through Bimble. When you create a Bimble or ‘placelist’, you are choosing to spotlight businesses that matter to you and are sharing them with a community of Bimblers passionate about supporting independents. Small Business Saturday came up with American Express but making it a lifestyle choice begins with Bimble.

Earlier this November, the Bimble team boarded one of the first flights carrying international passengers from London to New York City in almost 2 years. Check out my favorite finds from the trip on Bimble!

If you have a story you’d like to share about a great little place or other bimbling experiences, get in touch with us at hello@bimble.com