Newsletter: Nov 28, 2022

Supporting Small Business in Delray Beach

Well, it’s official! “Black Friday”, the annual kickoff to the holiday shopping season in our rear view mirror and we can now look forward to 4 weeks of unabated steals and deals.

While Black Friday is the holy grail for big box retailers and online mega-sites, it doesn’t do much for the Delray Beach economy.

Infinitely more impactful to Delray’s economy is “Small Business Saturday” which kicked off November 26th.

For those who may not know the story of “Small Business Saturday”, the movement was launched by American Express in 2010 in an effort to drive sales to local “Mom & Pop” businesses. The Small Business Administration, seeing the importance of the movement, officially joined Amex to co-op the annual event in 2011.

To some, the “SBS” movement is nothing more than a clever ploy created by a company that directly benefits from consumer spending. In reality, the “SBS” movement is critical to the lifeblood of Delray Beach’s economy.

When you look at the economic makeup of Delray beach, one thing you immediately notice is that Delray Beach’s landscape is not littered with malls or a large volume of big box retailers, but rather thousands of small retail businesses and service providers that help make Delray Beach a truly unique shopping destination like no other.

Before you consider heading to the malls or big box stores, let’s take a look at the tangible impact your dollars spent in Delray’s mom and pop businesses mean for the community.

1. Shopping small stimulates our local economy: When you shop online, especially with the big box sites, your shopping dollars leave Delray. When you shop local small business, that money cycles through our economy in the form of employing local residents, purchasing supplies and services from other Delray small businesses to name a few examples.

2. Small business employs our residents: While nationally, 47.5% of Americans are employed by small business. Here in Delray that figure is substantially higher due to the higher percentage of small businesses we have in our community.

Census data shows that employment by small business represents 55% of existing jobs in Delray Beach, with over 20,000 individuals employed.

When you shop Delray, you support our residents ( And by proxy, their families ) who work here.

3. Giving Back To The Local Community: Large national retailers historically support large national non-profits whereas small businesses tend to support local non-profits in the communities they are based in. Delray Beach is no different.

Delray’s small businesses such as Stuart & Shelby and Putt’n Around have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Delray Beach based non-profits over the years. Those dollars put food on the tables, provide for educational programming and so much more for those in need in our community.

Shopping small, shopping local has some less obvious, but just as impactful benefits as well.

A dollar spent in Delray’s local small businesses help owners innovate and expand, often utilizing products and services within the community to do so, creating a remarkable cycle of positive economic impact.

To our core as a community, small business represents the American dream.

Through your support of our local businesses, the American dream is live and well in Delray Beach.

*Editors Note: You can find many Delray Beach based small businesses by going to both the Downtown Development Authority and Greater Delray Beach Chamber Of Commerce websites listed below

DDA: https://downtowndelraybeach.com/

Greater Delray Beach Chamber Of Commerce: https://delraybeach.com/