This Holiday Season Lets Provide Hope to Small Businesses

We hope you and your family are safe and healthy this holiday season.  As the holidays quickly approach, everyone gets into giving mode, and consumer spending skyrockets quickly.  However, with the pandemic level high and many states tightening restrictions, holiday sales appear to be a disappointment for most small business owners as it is highly likely the biggest benefactors this holiday season are going to be the large retailers with a strong online presence, like Amazon, Walmart, and Target.  Small businesses cannot afford to take another hit, especially at the time of their biggest sale season.  What can we do as consumers to provide small business owners and employees with hope? 

Here at Commercial Lending X (“CLX”) we believe there are several things you can personally do to help small businesses this holiday season.  These are things you were likely going to do or spend money on anyway, but how you decide to direct that spending can make a huge difference.  Here is a list of items we are encouraging everyone we know to do to help small business owners and their employees:

• Before you buy an item online think if there is a local retailer you can pick that item up from.  Not another big box store, but a small local retailer that might carry that item instead.  If you are healthy, go to the local board game store, video game store, toy store, clothing retailer, bath store, etc., and buy that item in person.  Or call ahead and have it ready for pickup.  Even if it costs a few dollars more than buying it online, think of all of the good you will be doing for your local community. You will be helping to keep small businesses alive in your community that employ people locally, pay rent to someone who owns the property locally, and pay local taxes to support your community.  Even if the only local provider is a bigger box retailer, buying that item directly from that retailer versus online still helps the local community by keeping people locally employed, paying rent locally, and generating sales tax that will stay in your community.    

• If you cannot find a local retailer to buy that product you are looking for from, if you do have to buy it online, search for that item on the internet and try to find an independent retailer to order it from directly.  Even though there may not be a retailer in your immediate community that carries that item, there may be another local business in a surrounding community or elsewhere in your County or State that sells that item that could benefit from that sale.  Or another small retailer in another State that could benefit.  That retailer keeps more of the profits when they sell something directly versus selling it through an online portal such as Amazon.  Yes, it may take a few extra days to arrive because you are not using Prime shipping, but likely if it is a gift it is not something needed immediately, and how often do we really need those items delivered same day.   Even if the item is slightly more expensive than buying it from the big box retailer, think of the local jobs and businesses you are saving by buying it from a smaller retailer.  

• If the only way you can find a certain product you want to buy is through Amazon, then don’t buy the item from Amazon itself but buy it from a local retailer that sells through Amazon.  Although Amazon will still be getting a piece of the profits, the company that sells the product will be benefited from another sale where they can keep their staff employed, pay rent, and pay local taxes where they are at.  Yes, you might again lose Amazon Prime shipping, but again for gift giving how often do we actually need the gift within 24 hours.   Most people do not realize that when Amazon sees a retailer that has a hot product selling all over the country that Amazon then tries to source that product directly and compete with that retailer.  Amazon then promotes that product ahead of that retailer and can offer discounts due to volume buying.  By going around Amazon’s direct sale of the product and buying directly from a local retailer selling the same product on Amazon you help keep small businesses alive.  Often times the difference in price is so minuscule that you will hardly notice. 

• Although in many places we still cannot dine out, please continue to order meals from not only fast food and typical delivery restaurants, but from your local sit-down restaurants as well.  The sit-down restaurants have felt the hardest hit from the pandemic.  Many have adjusted to selling meals via carry-out to survive, but it is a much bigger adjustment for sit-down restaurants, especially those selling higher end food, and consumers, who prefer to dine in for full meals.  On evenings when you would normally have a celebratory dinner or a dinner out with friends and family, order that dinner from a sit-down restaurant and help keep those cherished sit-down restaurants alive so that they are there to enjoy once the pandemic ends.

• Last, please share this message on Facebook, Linked-In, and to your family and friends.  The more people who slightly change their buying habits this holiday season, the more businesses we can give hope to and the more local jobs we can save.  Remember, someday the pandemic is going to end, and many of us are going to want to go out and shop directly again.  However, if all of the small and local retailers and sit-down restaurants fail, there isn’t going to be anywhere to shop and dine and the malls are all going to be deserted.       

Although this message might not be popular or well received by all, here at CLX we work with small business owners’ day in and day out, and we know how vital they are for our communities.  Small business owners design and create new products and ideas and bring them to the market.  Ideation comes so much simpler for small businesses than large corporations with lots of bureaucracy.  In fact most of the large corporations started as small companies with brilliant ideas or grew by acquiring small companies with those ideas.  Small businesses create jobs locally, generate local tax revenue, rent local properties, and help generate local community wealth.  According to the Small Business Administration, small businesses account for:

• 99.7% of all private sector companies,
• 64% of all private sector job growth,
• and roughly half of all private sector employment. 

The people most small businesses employ live locally within our communities.  Yes, Amazon might open up a new warehouse or distribution facility and create some local jobs, but the only way Amazon competes is by minimizing its work force, whereas many small businesses compete by hiring people who can build relationships directly in their communities and by expanding and opening more stores and restaurants.  These businesses are essential to our communities, and the biggest gift we can provide them is to make a concerted effort to shop and dine with them. 

We always try to buy local at CLX, and this holiday season we intend to extend that buying to the pillars outlined above to help so many small businesses negatively impacted by Covid-19, and to keep as many of the dollars we spend local and benefiting our communities versus going to big corporations that have already benefited tremendously through the pandemic.  We hope you will follow along and do the same.  May God Bless all of you and have a very Happy Holidays!     

About Commercial Lending X

CLX is a small business that specializes in helping other business owners and real estate investors get the business loans and financing they need to be successful.  To learn more about CLX and the services we provide please check out our website at www.commerciallendingx.com.  You can also contact us directly at info@commerciallendingx.com or via phone at 888-975-0007.