Why Support Locally-Owned Businesses?   Local Character and Prosperity: In an increasingly homogenized world, communities that preserve their one-of-a-kind businesses and distinctive character have an economic advantage.   Community Well-Being: Locally-owned businesses build strong communities by sustaining vibrant town centers, linking neighbors in a web of economic and social relationships, as well as contributing to local causes.   Local Decision-Making: Local ownership ensures that important decisions are made locally by people who live in the community and who will feel the impacts of those decisions.   Keeping Dollars in the Local Economy: Compared to chain stores, locally-owned businesses recycle a much larger share of their revenue back into the local economy, enriching the entire community. Some say this statistic is 6 cents from every dollar spent at “box” or chain stores vs. 62 cents spent at small businesses stay local.   Jobs and Wages: Locally-owned businesses crate more jobs locally and, in some sectors, provide better wages and benefits than chain or box stores do.   Entrepreneurship: Entrepreneurship fuels America’s economic innovation and prosperity, and serves as a key means for families to move out of low-wage jobs and into the middle class. More than 80% of our capitalistic business society is the small business owner who took a chance and opened his/her own business.   Public Benefits and Costs: Local stores in downtowns require comparatively little infrastructure and make more efficient use of public services relative to big box stores and strip shopping malls.   Environmental Sustainability: Local stores help to sustain vibrant, compact, walk-able downtowns which in turn are essential to reducing sprawl, automobile/fuel use, habitat loss, and air & water pollution. As a country, our shopping “drive” to chain stores last year increased 40%, add in the continually-climbing cost of gasoline, and the carbon footprint those increases are leaving behind…it’s an easy step in “going green” to shop local.   Competition: A marketplace of tens of thousands of small businesses is the best way to ensure innovation and low prices over the long-term.   Product Diversity: A multitude of small businesses, each selecting products (based not on a national sales plan, but on their own interests and the needs of their local customers) guarantees a much broader range of product choices.