Hello world! Listen, we all love shopping online these days. Whether we are buying a birthday present for your grandmother who’s turning 80, a wedding gift for your friends who you’ve known forever, or maybe you just need to do a little shopping therapy for yourself. Hey, we get it, it’s part of life. Consumerism is in our blood, it’s as American as the 4th of July. It’s how we provide value to ourselves, to our loved ones, our neighbors, co-workers, etc.  Quite frankly, buying products and being consumers keeps the world working. Could you imagine if we stopped spending??

My point is that there is nothing wrong with spending money. Of course as long as you can afford the things you need and want. But have you ever wondered to yourself, is there a better way to shop? Where does my money go? Who collects my money and who benefits from it? If you are shopping at the big box retailers or large e-commerce platforms, chances are, you’ll have no idea who benefits from your purchase. You spend money on a transaction and most likely don’t think about the downstream effect your money has. I challenge you to stop and think for a minute about how you’r spending currently changes the community you live in. Does it? Have you ever bought from a locally owned business in your community? Here’s a fun fact according to Independent We Stand; for every $100 dollars you spend with a local business, $68 dollars is put back into the community you live in. On the other spectrum, big box retailers only put $43 dollars per every $100 dollars spent back into their local community. See what I mean? Shopping is great, but shopping local is even better. In fact, according to a study done by red egg marketing, 82.76% of shoppers would rather support a local business as opposed to shopping with a large corporation. Shoppers are even willing to pay more to do so!

So… why don’t they? Well, shopping local isn’t as streamlined as it should be. You have a few options when it comes to shopping local.