WASHINGTON — Shoppers popped into small, locally owned stores in record numbers during this year’s Small Business Saturday. However, they seem to have walked out with fewer or perhaps smaller shopping bags this year, mirroring a trend reported by many larger retailers.
About 88 million Americans shopped at independently owned shops this past Thanksgiving weekend in support of Small Business Saturday, a marketing campaign hatched by American Express in 2010 to help Main Street stores cash in on the country’s biggest shopping weekend. The number of shoppers was up about 15 percent over last year, according to estimates released by the credit card giant and the National Federation of Independent Business, a lobbying and research group.
In part, that’s because awareness of the holiday continues to build. Four years after the campaign’s inception, two-thirds of Americans are familiar with it. On Saturday, they sent more than 126,000 tweets promoting the holiday.
“More Americans recognize the direct link between shopping locally and stronger communities, and that’s an extremely positive result,” Dan Danner, NFIB’s president, said in a statement. The estimates are based on a survey of nearly 3,000 Americans.
The only problem is, the average amount spent by each customer dropped from $183 last year to an estimated $162, a decline of 11.5 percent. Consequently, the total haul for small stores, bars and restaurants remained essentially flat at $14.3 billion (last year’s total was approximately $14 billion).
It is a nearly identical decline as the one reported by retailers of all sizes. The National Retail Federation said Sunday that sales nationwide are expected to be down from $57.4 billion during last year’s four-day holiday shopping weekend to $50.9 billion this past weekend, an 11 percent slip.
Still, Main Street’s $14.3 billion haul represents about a 25 percent bump over the Saturday after Thanksgiving in 2012 – a sign that the campaign is gaining momentum.
“Once again, Small Business Saturday proved to be a bright spot over the first official holiday shopping weekend,” Denise Pickett, president of American Express OPEN, said in announcing the group’s sales estimates.
It helps that many of Washington’s leaders have supported the campaign. Most notably, President Barack Obama and daughters Sasha and Malia visited a Washington-area bookstore for the fourth straight year Saturday, this time stopping at Politics and Prose in the District of Columbia.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Maria Contreras-Sweet, head of the Small Business Administration, shopped at Hooray for Books in Alexandria, Virginia. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., reportedly visited more than a half-dozen small stores across her home state, while Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., tweeted a photo of himself serving up ice cream behind the counter at Torico in Jersey City.
