Think Small, Shoppers Told In Campaign

Day Gives Local Stores A Lift

Donna Akers (right), owner of FauxEver Yours in Huntsville, waits on friend and customer Bettinna Coger on Saturday in the store on the downtown square.

Donna Akers (right), owner of FauxEver Yours in Huntsville, waits on friend and customer Bettinna Coger on Saturday in the store on the downtown square.

Sunday, November 25, 2012

— Instead of getting caught up in the shopping frenzy at the malls and big-box retailers, some Northwest Arkansas residents trekked Saturday to the locally owned boutiques and resale shops on Polk Square in Huntsville.

Vanessa Boomer of Fayetteville made the trip with her mother, Sheila Battershell, also of Fayetteville, for a sale at FauxEver Yours on the Square.

“It’s one of our favorite small businesses,” Boomer said. “My husband grew up in Huntsville. We juststopped in one day. We come here for those Tano purses. We’ve been shopping here for years.”

In 2010, credit-card company American Express came up with the idea for Small Business Saturday, a national campaign encouraging shoppers to support independently owned businesses such as FauxEver Yours. It is held each year on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

More than 100 million people shopped at independently owned retailers on Small Business Saturday in 2011, according to a website promoting the event.

A group of friends from West Fork and Winslow woke to a chilly morning Saturday while camping at Withrow Springs State Park and decided to warm up by shopping on the Huntsville square. They said they liked FauxEver Yours.

“If we don’t support our small businesses, they’ll be gone,” said Marilyn Stokes of Winslow. “We live in a small town. We depend on small businesses.”

Donna Akers opened FauxEver Yours six years ago on West Main Street in Huntsville, which has a population of about 2,350. Akers, who lives in Springdale, grew up in Huntsville and was working at the courthouse in Huntsville.

“I felt like our little town was dying,” she said. “We kind of thought it would be a nice little hobby. It’s turned into a real, real job.”

Akers updates a Facebook page for her shop and benefits from by word-of-mouth recommendations, she said. She gets traffic in her store from as far away as Fayetteville, Bentonville and Prairie Grove.

“We’re kind of a little treasure that they’ve found,” Akers said.

Aside from the nationally advertised campaign supporting small businesses, chambers of commerce in Northwest Arkansas have promoted shopping in stores owned by area residents.

In Johnson County, the Clarksville-Johnson County Regional Chamber of Commerce organizes an open house the weekend before Thanksgiving to support locally owned shops, said Gina Wilkins, executive director of the chamber. The open house takes place on Sunday, but some businesses offered promotions throughout the weekend in the city of about 9,000 people.

The chamber used e-mail and Facebook to remind residents to shop at local businesses, she said.

“It keeps people in the community,” Wilkins said. “It just keeps a positive atmosphere in your community with people supporting you, especially with the economic times we have now.”

The Huntsville Area Chamber of Commerce began a Shop Huntsville campaign about a year ago to remind area residents of the businesses they can find close to home, said David Pemberton, executive director of the chamber.

Local merchants contribute to booster clubs and sports programs for children, Pemberton said. Their prosperity leads to greater tax revenue for the city and county.

“It’s so easy to get caught up in the bright lights of the big towns and neglect our local merchants,” Pemberton said. “Your heart and soul are your locally owned hometown businesses. Those are the ones that keep your downtown alive and vibrant.”

This month, community members participated in a celebration of improvements made to Polk Squarein downtown Huntsville. Updates include the addition of antique-style light posts, a new white gazebo in the center of the square, raised rock planters for bushes and flowers, and iron arches at each end of a brick path.

The square is lit for Christmas with a tree made of lights strung along a power pole in the center of the square.

Pat Stroud, who has owned The Attic Dress Shop for 25 years, relies on newspaper advertising, Facebook and word-of-mouth to draw traffic to her store, which carries a variety of clothing, jewelry and home decor.

“We’ve been busy all day today,” she said Saturday. “I think the shop local campaign has helped tremendously. It just makes people aware.”

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 13 on 11/25/2012