Susan and Andy Harper strolled down Frazier Avenue in the North Shore Friday morning while searching for the 25 items on the North Shore Merchants Collective's annual treasure hunt list.
By 11:30 a.m., they had only found a few items hidden at one of the 25 participating merchants, but they had already stopped to buy a puzzle at Blue Skies - the place to find the "perfect little gifts." A day before "Small Business Saturday," Susan said she loves window shopping and supports small businesses, like those along Frazier Avenue, all the time. Her daughter works at Cashew, a local vegan restaurant in the downtown neighborhood, and the retired couple took their children and grandchildren to the Beast and Barrel for a Thanksgiving meal the day before.
"I'm not a mall person at all and never really shop online," she said. "We get exercise and window shop at the same time here." She then joked that their legs and wallets both get the exercise.
Small Business Saturday was created by American Express in 2010 to help grow the customer base for small businesses, and while Black Friday still remains the busiest shopping day of the year, the National Retail Federation predicts 67 million people will shop small on Saturday. In total, the NRF estimates 164 million people will shop over the five-day shopping weekend that began on Thanksgiving and will end with online deals on Cyber Monday.
Jim Brown, Tennessee state director for the National Federation of Independent Business, said small businesses are important to the health of the local economy.
"Small Business Saturday is a good opportunity for people to support the independent shops and restaurants that support our communities and to find presents and deals they can't find at the malls and chain stores," Brown said in a statement.
An American Express study found that about 67 cents of every dollar spent at a small business remains in the local community. The study also found that 59 percent of the roughly 2,000 survey participants plan to shop small online Saturday.
At Vinterest Southside on the other side of downtown, owner Katherine Schurer is keeping it local down to the home decor store's Black Friday ad, which was created by a University of Tennessee at Chattanooga student. Schurer said there will be over 100 doorbuster items at the Vinterest locations in both downtown Chattanooga and Hixson Saturday, and the whole store is also 10 percent off. There are more than 60 vendors at the Southside Vinterest location and over 100 in Hixson.
"The money really does go straight back into the community," Schurer said. "It goes to someone who is possibly your neighbor."
The Chattanooga Public Library's downtown location off Broad Street will host the fifth annual "Small Business Saturday Fair," from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., which will feature a handful of vendors, free coffee giveaways, door prizes and a dedicated area for teen entrepreneurs.
Back over on Frazier Avenue in the North Shore, Winder Binder store manager Gina Micolo and assistant store manager Mandi Abercrombie echoed the same sentiments.
"It's important to shop local because when you do, you are supporting the families of the people who own the businesses and helping us to feed our families and survive," Micolo said.
"The money is going directly to a person and not a building," Abercrombie added. Starting Friday, the store is the only place to pre-order Chattanooga Football Club tickets for the 2019 season other than online.
At Blue Skies, owner Tina Harrison said that with every purchase, a customer will then be able to pick an ornament from a bag that either gives them 10, 20 or 40 percent off their purchase Saturday. Harrison said it seems like the store gets more and more support ever year from the local community on Small Business Saturday.
"It shines a light on the fact that it's the local businesses that make a community different from any other," she said about the shopping holiday. "We are the businesses that make Chattanooga different."
Contact staff writer Allison Shirk Collins at ashirk@timesfreepress.com, @AllisonSCollins or 423-757-6651.