Amid holiday shopping craze, local businesses hope to leave mark

The holiday shopping season is a time for major retailers to lure droves of consumers in-person and online to take advantage of their annual bargain sales.

While small businesses don’t attract the same number of customers their counterparts do, Small Business Saturday is an opportunity for these businesses to showcase to their community they have more to offer than just the merchandise they sell.

“I want people to feel like they’re comfortable, that we’re here to help them,” Caya Cagri said, who owns Cottage Monet in Rockville. “They don’t have to buy when they come here but they always come back. We’re very thankful for anyone who walks through our door. We welcome them as soon as they walk in.”

Artisans Gallery owner Ginger Armstrong echoed the same sentiment, emphasizing the ability to have a meaningful interaction with customers.

“We offer a really pleasant experience,” Armstrong said. “People come in when they’ve had a bad day and they say they just need an artisan’s fix. We know a lot of customers by name and you don’t get that in most places. People are aching for that.”

Small Business Saturday was created by American Express in 2010 in the middle of the recession as a means of encouraging shoppers to do holiday shopping at small businesses. More than $100 billion has been spent on Small Business Saturday since its inception according to American Express. Furthermore, around two-thirds of every dollar spent at a small business stays in the local community.

“We recognize the hardships faced by small business owners today and want to inspire people to take notice and Shop Small to support their communities on Small Business Saturday and beyond,” Elizabeth Rutledge, Chief Marketing Officer for American Express, said in a news release. “Retail is changing, but local shops are the fabric of our communities, helping them to thrive in the future is part of our brand ethos and backing promise.”

One of the hardships small businesses like Artisans Gallery face in competing with major retailers is maintaining and attracting customers through an online presence.

“Online shopping has been our biggest problem, our biggest challenge, “Armstrong said. “We just started a website but we can’t compete with Amazon. We had a website years ago but people enjoy coming into the store so much. Now I feel like I have to have a website to even be current. I lose a lot of sales to online shopping.”

Mariale Bonilla, an artist at ArtTepuy in Rockville, acknowledges the competition with major retailers, in-store or online, is immense. The Venezuelan native, though, has faith in local consumers’ desire to look for unique products and shopping experience, both of which she feels small businesses are able to offer their colossal competitors can’t.

“We trust the community and we know that this is a new trend that is becoming stronger now than ever, where people want to know who is behind that product that they’re buying, who is making it, who designed it, what it’s made of and what the artist was thinking of when they created it,” Bonilla said. “This is very unique.”