Significantly
Local businesses provide most
One-of-a-kind businesses are an integral part of a community’s distinctive character: The unique character of any town or region is what people love about it, and what tourists come to visit. Richard Moe, president of the National Historic Preservation Trust, says, “When people go on vacation they generally seek out destinations that offer them the sense of being someplace, not just anyplace.”
Local business owners invest in community: People who own local businesses live in the community, are less likely to leave, and are more invested in the community’s future.
Customer service is better: Local businesses often hire people with more specific product expertise for better customer service.
Competition and diversity lead to more choices: A marketplace of tens of thousands of small businesses is the best way to ensure innovation and low prices over the long term. 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.
Local businesses have less environmental impact: Locally owned businesses can make more local purchases, requiring less transportation, and generally set up shop in town or city
Local businesses’ public benefits far outweigh their public
Local businesses encourages investment in the community: A growing body of economic research shows that in an increasingly homogenized world, entrepreneurs and skilled workers are more likely to invest in and settle in communities that preserve their one-of-a-kind businesses and distinctive character.
Local businesses give more support to nonprofits:
I don’t think I truly appreciated my mom until I had children of my own. Now, as a mother of three amazing children, I realize the profound impact of everything she did, all the sacrifices she made to raise my sister and I on her own. My children are my world and this job allows me to be a part of their every day life. I always say that before my job as a business owner, my job as a mother is most important, and my goal every day is to never take that for granted.
I am so thankful for the local support of my community that allows me to continue to grow in my business and what I love to do. Mother's Day is right around the corner! If you procrastinate a little, we've still got you covered... a Gaudie and Company gift card is an instant gift with big impact! Send it straight to Mom's email inbox, or print it yourself to give to her in person. Gaudie and Company has so many gift ideas to show mom just how special she really is. We hope you have a wonderful day celebrating all the mothers (and mother figures!) in your life!
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Kendra Scott’s entrepreneurial career was launched out of a spare bedroom in Austin, Texas. It was 2002, and Scott had just given birth. Bored and on bed rest, she withdrew $500 and bought the materials to make earrings. At this point, she’d been making jewelry as gifts for friends for years, as she was frustrated that the only available options at retailers were bookended by high-fashion, expensive pieces and trendy, low-quality pieces with nothing but blank space in between.
Why not, she thought, go about filling the gap? “I put that first jewelry collection in a tea box, put my son in a baby Bjorn and we went store to store writing down orders,” Scott says. At the last store she visited, she had to sell her original samples in order to buy the materials to make the orders she’d just filled. During those early days, Scott sold her car and took out multiple personal loans, funneling the funds into her nascent business.
A single mother raising two boys, nagging worries often kept her up at night. “There were so many times I was afraid I was going to lose everything…I remember negotiating with my landlord on when I could pay rent. I had nothing to back me up,” she says. “Failure wasn't an option. I had to succeed for them.”
It wasn’t clear at the time but all those sleepless nights were worth it. From its humbling beginnings in a tea box, Kendra Scott Design has become a multimillion-dollar business. Last year, the company took in $75 million in revenue and is on track to take in more than $110 million this year. Meanwhile, Scott predicts her employee count will mushroom from its current 350 to 500 by late 2015 as more stores open (currently there are 20, but by the end of the year, there will be 38 retail locations.)
These days “I sleep a lot better at night,” Scott says.
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