The East Orlando Sun

Before heading out to shop this holiday season, local merchants want you to consider more than just the items on your wish list when it comes to where you decide to buy.

Sean Snaith, the director of the Institute for Economic Competitiveness at the University of Central Florida, says the holiday spending trend the past few years has shifted greatly away from smaller, locally owned businesses to big-box retailers and online websites.

“Big-boxes are popping up everywhere for a reason,” he said, “and it’s not because people don’t shop there.”

The result, says Kevin McFall, the executive director of the East Orlando Chamber of Commerce, is an increasing number of small empty store fronts in local shopping centers. An emptiness, McFall says, that is hurting the very core of the local economic community: small-business owners.

“These people are the ones sitting next to us in restaurants, sending their kids to the same day cares and walking next to us on the street,” he said. “… These local businesses are the lifeblood of any community.”

To help support these local businesses across the country during the holiday season, American Express started an initiative for a day dedicated to shopping at small businesses, Nov. 26, called “Small Business Saturday,” which is sandwiched between Black Friday on Nov. 25, and Cyber Monday on Nov. 28.

Though the overall tally result of this newly deemed day — held for the first time last year — may not be near as substantial as those of its counterparts, Snaith says the day may help people give a second thought as to where they shop.

“It can help get more people to think about other opportunities to patronize local businesses as opposed to having their spending leave the area,” he said.

Local landscape

A greater percentage of money spent at small businesses is reinvested back into the local economy, Snaith said, which betters the local economic situation as a whole.

“The more money that is kept in the area, the better the local economy will be,” he said.

Yet, he said, do to pressures of the economy, over the past few years consumers have been driven away from these mom and pop stores, in favor of the convenience and affordability of many big-box retailers.

Brit Beemer, the founder of America’s Research Group and a retail expert, said a survey he conducted last year showed that only 37 percent of people said they would definitely shop at an independent retailer that holiday season. He said this differs drastically to when he would conduct such surveys 25 years ago and nearly 80 percent said they would.

“Generally I would say the independent dealer has struggled more so than the major chains,” Beemer said. “… That doesn’t mean they’re beat, it just means that there’s more of a challenge facing them.”

In order to stand out, Snaith said, small businesses need to find their market niche and offer what big retailers can’t, whether that is through unique products or personal customer service relationships.

“The ones who have lived through this are probably in a better position than they were before the whole recession started,” Snaith said. “It’s the Darwinian dimension of the recession: Only the fittest survive.”

Small business sound off

Though many local businesses have fallen victim to the recession, the ones that survived stress that they are still very much alive and ready for the holiday rush.

Nimesh Patel, the owner of Groom Grub & Belly Rub in Avalon Park, says Avalon Park is a community that depends heavily on its local merchants, and the merchants depend on the community.

“All of the small businesses here have a united goal: to create and serve the community,” he said. “We all try to help each other. That’s the beauty of living in Avalon Park.”

The most difficult part of running a small business in Avalon, he said, is competing with the big-box powerhouse that is the Waterford Lakes Town Center.

It may not be easy, but they make it work, he said. On their side, he says, is the charm and service of small town shopping. His appointment-only dog care and salon business has kept steady business since it opened a year and a half ago because of the one-on-one, both person and pet, relationships he is able to build with customers, which he says they often don’t have the opportunity to build with large retailers.

“This is a little town,” he said. “It’s not everywhere where you can walk into your bakery and know everyone and have them ask how you’re doing.”

Frank Nardolillo, the owner of just that kind of bakery, Davis Bakery & Co., says it’s that personalized service he thinks that keeps people coming back.

“As small businesses we have to be cognizant that consumers have choices,” Nardolillo said. “We have to compete with Waterford, and that’s not an easy thing. We have to try harder to compete, and we do.”

Tiffany Bayley, the owner of Avalon Park Jewelers, says consumers need to realize no matter how hard small businesses try to please consumers, the relationship has to go both ways.

“You can only take care of them if they take care of you,” she said. “As long as you are spending money elsewhere, you’ll continue to see ‘out of business’ signs in our windows.”