Look. Local. First.

The annual tradition of emphasizing the need to support small businesses during the holiday spending season is important. Small Business Saturday is the Saturday after Thanksgiving. The Lynchburg Regional Business Alliance encourages everyone to intentionally support your local small businesses. And though this campaign comes once a year, you can be absolutely certain that the Alliance does not wait for or rely on an annual marketing blitz to support small business. The Alliance is all in… all the time for small businesses. While applauding the annual, well-publicized Small Business Saturday effort, we encourage the citizens of our region to view their support of small businesses as an ongoing responsibility and opportunity to shop locally. And shopping locally is not solely directed at retail. There is much more to it. Shopping locally is wise, but we encourage everyone to purchase locally, too. As you make purchase decisions—big or small—think about which businesses—big or small—can provide you with outstanding service or products. Keeping your purchasing locally exponentially compounds all of our purchasing power to grow jobs and attract more capital investment. We can GROW together to support our business community, neighbors, families, and governments. And purchasing locally is certainly more broad than buying holiday gifts locally. Don’t get me wrong—buy those holiday gifts locally! But the Alliance encourages you to think locally before making any purchasing decisions. From air fresheners to air service, baubles to buses, cakes to cars (and I could go on and on and on), it is all about our collective, coordinated, and conscious efforts to think about purchasing locally first. Make local business and the Lynchburg region top of mind whenever you are making purchasing decisions. Please consider making your purchases—whether small or large, personal or professional, home or business, retail or manufacturing, services or goods—locally whenever possible. Look. Local. First.