In an effort to make the Chamber's "Shop Local" Campaign have more positive affects, I would like to ask our members to email in how their business is shopping local.  If you will, please take the time to let us know how you are supporting local businesses and what drew you to those businesses.  Was it a discount offered to you by a particular business?  Or was it great service or maybe both.

The Chamber's staff and Promotions Committee would love to hear why our members shop local.  We would also like to hear why you seek products and or services out of town versus shopping local.  Once we gather enough responses, we will share them with our membership.  Hopefully these responses will help your business fain a better  understanding of how to promote the importance of shopping local.

In the meantime, please see below for some ideas on why shopping local is so important to our community.  And don't forget to take advantage of our the Chamber's "Member to Member Discount" Program where over 100 members are offering a wide variety of discounts to fellow Chamber members.

 

 

Nine Reasons to Shop Local Shop Lincoln County in 2012

We all know how fun it is to shop in Lincoln County, but there's more to it:

 The Lincolnton-Lincoln County Chamber of Commerce has created a campaign to raise public awareness about the benefits of shopping in Lincoln County.  The Chambers Promotions Committee slogan "Shop Local Shop Lincoln County" outlines nine very important reasons of why it is so important to support our local businesses during this economic downturn: 

1. Protect Local Character and Prosperity
By choosing to support locally owned businesses, you help maintain Lincoln County's diversity and charm.

2. Community Well-Being
Locally owned businesses build strong neighborhoods by sustaining communities, linking neighbors, and by contributing more to local causes.

3.Local Decision Making
Local ownership means that important decisions are made locally by people who live in the community and who will feel the impacts of those decisions.

4. Keeping Dollars in the Local Economy
Your dollars spent in locally-owned businesses have three times the impact on your community as dollars spent outside of Lincoln County. When shopping locally, you simultaneously create jobs, fund more city & county services through sales tax.  This in turn invests in neighborhood improvement, police, fire and ambulance, cultural arts, parks, and librariesand promotes community development. 

5. Job and Wages
Locally owned businesses create more jobs locally and, in some areas, provide better wages and benefits.

6. Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship fuels America's economic innovation and prosperity, and serves as a key means for families to move out of low-wage jobs and into the middle class.

7. Environmental Sustainability
Local stores help to sustain vibrant, compact, a walkable town center which in turn are essential to reducing sprawl, automobile use, habitat loss, and air and water pollution.

8. Competition
A marketplace of tens of thousands of small businesses is the best way to ensure innovation and low prices over the long-term.

9. Product Diversity
A multitude of small businesses, each selecting products based not on a national sales plan but on their own interests and the needs of their local customers, guarantees a much broader range of product choices.

With so many large municipalities surrounding Lincoln County it is always tempting to drive to them to shop, however, next time think of all that can be gained if only we shopped local.

 

Local businesses can participate in the Shop Local Campaign by visiting our website at Lincolnchambernc.org and printing the Shop Local Shop Lincoln County Flyer to post in their place of business or stop by the Chamber and we will be happy to provide you with a Shop Local decal.

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