New Campaign Reminds Nova Scotians To ‘Buy Local Again’
HALIFAX — With the holiday season just around the corner, it’s more important than ever for people to buy local when looking for that perfect gift. That’s because many small retailers in Halifax, and elsewhere, are struggling. The buy local campaigns from two years ago have long run out of steam and many independent businesses are seeing significant drops in sales.
That is why Charcoal, a Halifax marketing firm, has teamed up with the Downtown Halifax Business Commission and ACOA to bring on a new campaign this fall, called Buy Local Again.
Lauren Thomander, a creative content specialist with Charcoal, was a part of the team that visited more than 60 small businesses across 10 business districts in Nova Scotia. The firm captured the businesses’ stories while focusing on the people behind our favourite spots.
“The reach we’ve had so far has just been amazing,” said Thomander about the campaign that launched on October 3. “And it’s been really cool to hear some businesses come back and say ‘we’ve had people come visit us because they saw the campaign’, which is our whole goal.”
“It’s been really rewarding to see that. And even just going to the businesses and seeing everybody’s smiles. The whole idea behind the campaign was to show the real and authentic humans behind the small business and to support your friends and your neighbors.”
The thing that struck Thomander the most was how grateful these business owners were for having loyal customers, and the sense of community that each small business tried to foster.
“When I was going around visiting all these businesses, there’s so many that I just didn’t really know about before. It was pretty eye opening for me and my team as well just to see all these different businesses out there and all these people that are working so hard.”
Putting together the campaign even convinced Thomander to become a patron of some of the places she filmed. One of her favourite new spots to visit is the Oxford Taproom. She also got to revisit one of her favourite cafes — Apartment 3 in Lower Sackville.
“I used to live that way and I did go there quite a bit when I lived up there It was just so cool to be able to go out and see them; how they’ve been growing so much and they have become very busy out there,” said Thomander. “Because when we were there filming it was constantly busy. It was actually hard to be able to talk to them.”
Kimberley Dares, the owner of The Trainyard in Dartmouth, is one of the businesses that has seen the early benefits from the campaign. She has had new customers walk in who heard about The Trainyard because of it.
Dares says the usual ebbs and flows a small business faces have become less predictable. Things like holidays no longer bring a guaranteed bump in business like they used to just a few short years ago. It’s become clear that, in a time of high inflation, people believe it’s easier, and cheaper, to buy something from Amazon or a bigger box store.
“There was a lot less certainty around some of the things that we’ve come to count on; things like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, being like a bump. The bump was less noticeable,” recalled Dares.
“It’s been very unpredictable. And then over the summer, the tourist traffic really helped us a lot; we had a lot of cruise ship traffic that we hadn’t seen in a while. But I think the piece that is missing is the local shoppers who had been in 2020 and early 2021. Everything got really hard for everyone Life got really hard. And sometimes it is easier to just get that box delivered to your house.”
Dares is seeing a growing trend where more customers are coming from further away (like tourists), but the constant neighbourhood shopper is becoming less frequent. She believes there is a false perception out there that buying local is more expensive.
“We were seeing lots of traffic from people from further a fire who has like stumbled upon Dartmouth as a vacation destination, but fewer from our neighbors. The feedback that I see around small business is a perception that things are more expensive.”
“I haven’t changed the price of my greeting cards in six years. I haven’t changed the price of like stickers and things like that in years. A lot of like a lot of our goods are the same price that they were when I brought them in 2019 Or when I brought them in 2017. And the price increases that have occurred are like a margin of 10 percent not a margin of 500 percent or 200 percent or any of these like unbelievable numbers that we’re hearing in the media.”
You can follow the Buy Local Again Campaign on social media.
Derek Montague is a Huddle reporter in Halifax. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].