Black Friday annually rallies people to predominantly big box businesses, but a northern Michigan town had a different successful shopping day this holiday season.
Small Business Saturday comes two days after Thanksgiving. It has been vital to rural areas for almost a decade and the pandemic has only increased that importance.
Anne Gentry, Executive Director of the Alpena Downtown Development Authority, said Small Business Saturday is very necessary, especially this year.
“Small Business Saturday and especially the holiday season has been really crucial to encourage people if they can to support their small businesses to give kind of one final push of the year to maybe make up for some of the losses earlier this year,” she said.
She said businesses experienced their best sales of the year this past Friday and Saturday. The community support was the last chance some retail owners had to bring in profit.
"Just following up with some of our retailers downtown this week, they said that both Friday and Saturday were some of their biggest sales day of this whole year and even over the last few years this has been the best Small Business Saturday for them.”
Gentry said more people have turned to support small businesses amid the pandemic as community members have a greater understanding that their dollars make a difference. She said the community realizes more so now that businesses could go away without the help of the individuals.
