As a business owner, every purchasing decision you make can ripple out, affecting far more than you realize. This is the ethos behind social procurement, a concept that encourages people to spend their money in ways that benefit the environment, community, and anything else they may be passionate about.
Though buying locally has many benefits for the community at large, there are plenty of personal upsides for those who adopt this way of doing business. Here are five of the most profound:
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1. What Goes Around Comes Around
When small businesses purchase from other small businesses, it’s far more likely that the favor will be returned. This keeps money flowing around the community, thus stimulating the local economy.
Money spent at small local businesses generally also contributes to diversity, giving you more options and your town more beauty and character. If that same money were consistently redirected to large chain stores, diversity may suffer, with smaller stores shutting up shop as conglomerates take over.
2. Build Professional Relationships
By showing your face in local shops and developing relationships with other business owners, you open up endless opportunities for growth. For example, when the owner of your favorite coffee shop needs the products or services you offer, your likelihood of winning their business is higher if you’ve established a friendly professional relationship with them.
3. Expand your Customer Base
Not only are other small business owners more likely to buy from you, but they’re also more likely to send their customers your way. We humans are helpful creatures by nature. Most of us love connecting a person in need with someone who can provide the solution.
Buying locally and establishing strong professional bonds with your suppliers is an excellent way to position yourself as a solution to the problems in your niche. In this way, you can expand your customer base without having to invest in any additional advertising.
4. Establish Partnerships
Some of the small businesses you establish friendly professional relationships with may be a good match for partnerships and promotions. This can be as obvious as a cafe and a cupcake shop working together or as obscure as a cinema and a pajama shop doing a movie marathon slumber party event. The opportunities for cross-promotion, competitions, and events are limited only by your imagination and your persuasiveness.
5. Supply Chain Transparency
One of the most impactful benefits of buying locally from business owners with whom you can establish personal relationships is the level of supply chain transparency this allows. When you work with small local businesses, you can generally visit the premises, discuss their suppliers, and find people who share your goals and values.
This can help you sidestep some major dramas, including cyberattacks that come via third-party vendors. Even the best small business IT support often can’t protect you from such attacks because they come via a trusted link in your supply chain.
Avoiding ambiguity with your supply chain is also the best way to ensure that you’re not indirectly connected to environmental damage, poor working conditions, and other bad practices that are often obscured through strategic supply chain ambiguity.
The way you spend your money as a small business owner is far more important than you may at first think. Every dollar is a vote for the future you want for yourself, your business, and your community. Spend your votes wisely.