Plaid Friday

Remember a few posts back when I raved about Black Friday? Well, I mean it's still pretty cool-- but check out this new initiative: Plaid Friday. While I admit might take a while to get off the ground, Plaid Friday has great potential to help out a lot of local businesses out during this popular shopping day.

Instead of rushing to huge shopping malls and larger commercial stores, take a new approach to Black Friday: appreciate the city you live in by shopping at the rich variety of locally owned stores and restaurants. This is good because not only do you get to avoid the Black Friday mall mob rush (which, I do understand does have it's thrills) and you get to help out local businesses who rely on locals keep thriving.

If you are concerned shopping local won't be as good for the economy, then think about this: Even if you spend less this season, you are creating more jobs in your local town by shifting more of your shopping to locally-owned businesses. This is because, as Laury Hammel and Stacy Mitchell's article "Regional business leaders On Black Friday, "go local" instead" says:

Because unlike online retailers and big chains, local businesses depend on one another for certain goals and services (like accounting, Printing, and so on) so a larger share of what you spend at local stores is re-spent elsewhere in the community, supporting a variety of local jobs.

I found it interesting that “several studies have…found that locally owned businesses creates about 3x as much economic activity and more jobs in the New England region than spending that same dollar at a chain store.”

The idea behind “Plaid Friday” started in Oakland, California. But there’s ways to help in Boston and throughout New England at local stores:

In Greater Boston, for example, under the theme “Think Local, Thank Local” members of Cambridge Local First are donating a percentage of their sales during the week, starting on Plaid Friday to a local nonprofit, Food for Free.

All and all, I think this is a great idea. What are your thoughts? Do you believe it will catch on? Will you support local stores this Friday?