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Iceni Magazine | February 7, 2025

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6 Reasons Why We Should Shop At Local Independent Businesses

6 Reasons Why We Should Shop At Local Independent Businesses

Local businesses are the lifeblood of any local community and often hear of drives and initiatives to get us to shop locally and specifically with independents.

But what are the exact reasons and advantages for which we should do this? Here we look at 6 specific examples of these types of reasons.

You Are Helping The Local Economy

Quite simply, you are helping your local economy. Not only are you giving your hard-earned money to a local owner who is a real person involved in your local area and actually working at the location you spent your money in. Also, the chances are that they then, in turn, will be spending money in the local area, thus creating a local economy where money circulates again and again.

Customer Service 

You find that there is often a more thorough focus on customer service as the staff are a much tighter knit bunch. All the employees will have a personal relationship with the owner and this allows for a much higher level of actually caring about what goes on at work. Given that most of us are frustrated with customer service and a lot of these frustrations are with bureaucracy.

You Know They Are Not Moving

Chances are an independent, local business is not going to be looking for the opportunity to move on, close a location and seek a slightly better footfall, or revenue in another town. Whereas a national or multinational chain firm won’t blink an eye at moving, relocating or closing a branch simply as it is more cost-effective to have fewer locations. Just look at the example of what has happened to the high street banking sector in recent years if you want a cautionary tale. Take the example of Dorsoo, the best bed shop Beverley has to offer as an example.

Specialist Advice

Very often these days the staff in retail stores are not trained with specialist knowledge in any in-depth way. But the exception to this might be independent shops, the staff turnover, in general, is lower and as a result, the staff will have been around for longer and will have amassed more specialist knowledge. In addition to this, the owners often work on the shop floor themselves and will, in most cases, have a passion or interest in the products sold there. 

Supporting Local Jobs

Following on from what we just said the independent sector provides a huge amount of jobs to the local economy, and although not always the highest paying jobs you often find that employees in these types of roles state job satisfaction as being at a good level.

You Can Talk To The Owner

If for any reason you need to speak to someone more senior than the sales assistant who is serving you a the till or on the shop floor then you certainly can. In fact, you can actually speak to the owner, going straight to the top of the tree. So if it’s a complaint or issue or even just to pass on some positive feedback it is very reassuring to know that the person you can talk to is up there.


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