3 Ways to Support Local Fashion on Small Business Saturday

Small Business Saturday was launched in 2010 by American Express as a way to help small businesses increase sales between the big box stores on Black Friday and online shopping on Cyber Monday. It’s been a huge success with 88 million consumers shopping on Small Business Saturday in 2014, which was a 14.9 percent increase from 2013.

Here at Fashion Mingle, our entire concept is developed around shopping small all year to support your local fashion boutiques and independent fashion professionals. We believe that if you shop with locally owned boutiques that carry independent fashion designer labels, you’re not only keeping your money in your own community, you’re helping the entire eco-system of independent fashion professionals.

For example, if you buy from an independently owned fashion boutique in your city, they are likely carrying small independent fashion brands. Those apparel designers have new collections to design and an inventory to produce. Guess who they need to pay to create samples, hire models, style their collection, shoot lookbooks, and produce their small inventory? Local fashion professionals.

We would like to challenge you to look at your holiday shopping list for Christmas and Hanukkah gifts and decide who you are going to shop small for this holiday season. The obvious choices are for every mom, sister, daughter,  girlfriend, … basically, you can easily shop small in local fashion boutiques for every female on your list. So just do it. In 2015 make the commitment to support your local fashion community by shopping in local fashion boutiques.

3 Tips to Help You #ShopSmall and Support Your Local Fashion Industry:

1. Bring cash – Every time you use a credit card or debit card the business owner has to pay a fee to Master Card, Visa, or American Express. Make sure you keep cash on hand when shopping local so more of your money stays in your community.
2. Plan ahead – use hashtags such as #SmallBusinessSaturday, #ShopSmall, and #SmallBizSat to find sales, search by location with your city name and scan images promoting sales on your favorite social networks like Instagram and Twitter.
3. Shop Etsy – Shopping online doesn’t mean just shopping on Amazon. You can find plenty of handmade items from independent artisans for all the men on your list. With the reassurance of customer reviews and speedy delivery options, you don’t even need to leave your home to support independent fashion.

Do you have a favorite local fashion boutique? Tag us and them with the hashtag #JustGotMingled and we’ll promote their boutique on our social networks throughout the holiday shopping season.