15 Years Of Shopping Local: LocalShops1 Celebrates Anniversary

ST. PETERSBURG, FL — After moving to St. Petersburg from Fort Lauderdale, Ester Venouziou was impressed by how many local businesses populated Central Avenue and operated in her new home.

It reminded her of Fort Lauderdale, which once saw many independently owned businesses of its own.

“It was really cool and had a lot of fun stores. It was really beautiful,” she told Patch. “It was really cool and funky. It used to kind of be like (St. Pete’s) 600 block. When I left, the national brands and high-end stores came in.”

Fearing the same could happen in St. Pete, Venouziou founded LocalShops1 to promote and support small businesses in 2008.

“St. Pete is really cool and Central (Avenue) has all these independent shops. It has a really good vibe,” she said. “This is my one-person mission to get people to shop local when they can.”
Today, her company celebrates its 15th anniversary. A celebration of LocalShops1 — which she’s dubbed “The Party of the Year” — takes place Thursday, 6 to 9 p.m. at The Floridian downtown. Limited tickets are left for the event.

Venouziou was working for the Tampa Bay Times when she came up with the idea for LocalShops1.

Her parents would frequently visit from New Jersey. While here, they’d often gravitate to national restaurant and store chains.

“They didn’t know where else to go,” she said.

She created a list of local restaurants and shops to check out while she was working. Eventually, she asked her friends for suggestions on social media.

As her list grew, Venouziou created a simple website to keep track of the list and share it with others.

This grew into hosting pop-up events throughout the city and, in 2010, she organized her first Shopapalooza, which today is one of the biggest holiday shopping events in the state.

When she was laid off by the Times in 2011, she decided to focus on LocalShops1 full-time.

While Shopapalooza grew into her signature annual event, she hosted others as well — markets, networking events and partnerships with other businesses and organizers.

Everything changed after the COVID-19 pandemic, Venouziou said. “For me it was a time to sit back and look at what works and what doesn’t work. Like the networking events. I realized it wasn’t necessary to do all these things and focused on larger events and partnered with other organizations.”

She also focused on using social media as a platform to promote and support local businesses.
All these years later, her mission remains the same: encouraging people to shop local.

“It’s really important,” Venouziou said. “This summer has been awful for so many local businesses because of the weather, the economy, just so many factors … You don’t need to automatically go to Amazon or Target for everything you need. There are plenty of places to buy things you need. Like, you don’t need to go to Target for a piece of art when there are so many local artists here.”