Main Street/Shop Local

“Home Sweet Home,” a new study from Civic Economics for Independent We Stand and the North American Retail Hardware Association, shows that purchasing through locally owned home improvement stores generates twice as much local economic activity than shopping at a chain store.

The owners of Connecticut’s Bank Square Books will open Savoy Bookshop & Café in nearby Westerly, Rhode Island, in late summer. The store, in the former Savoy Hotel, will feature wooden floors and open brick walls in a 2,500-square-foot, two-level space.

The second annual Independent Bookstore Day will be held on Saturday, April 30, 2016, the event’s organizers announced on Friday.

Longtime Bay Area small business advocates Pete Mulvihill, co-owner of Green Apple Books, and Hut Landon, NCIBA executive director, this week welcomed the launch of SF Biz Connect, a citywide business-to-business shop local campaign.

Booksellers expressing concerns on a range of issues during the Small Business Majority’s first-ever Small Business Leadership Summit last week included incoming ABA President Betsy Burton of The King’s English Bookshop, Bradley Graham of Politics & Prose, Christin Evans of The Booksmith and Kepler’s Books, and Kris Kleindienst of Left Bank Books.

For St. Louis, Missouri’s Left Bank Books, the past year was the most successful — as well as one of the most eventful — in the store’s 46-year history.

In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, Stacy Mitchell and Fred Clements of Advocates for Independent Business took the U.S. Congress to task for favoring the interests of big corporations at the expense of Main Street retailers and small businesses.

Sales were strong at three New Orleans indies that banded together to celebrate Independent Bookstore Day a week later than the rest of the country, due to a conflict with Jazz Fest.

Booksellers celebrated the inaugural Independent Bookstore Day on May 2, and early reports indicate that sales were up at 80 percent of responding stores, compared to the first Saturday of May 2014.

Stacy Mitchell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, recently testified at a Congressional Progressive Caucus forum on how federal public policy is skewed to favor big corporations and places small businesses at a competitive disadvantage.

In this commentary from the op-ed page of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance explains why the news that Amazon wants to expand its footprint in Minnesota — but only if it wins significant public subsidies — should put taxpayers and public officials on high alert.

For the first annual nationwide celebration of Independent Bookstore Day, this Saturday, May 2, indie bookstores in cities and towns across the country will feature book-related activities, special promotions, prizes, and signed prints and literary merchandise from well-known authors created exclusively for the day.

As a supporting cosponsor of National Small Business Week, this May 4 – 8, ABA presents a column by Maria Contreras-Sweet, administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration, on the event’s many offerings.

All the Light We Cannot See wins Pulitzer Prize; NRF contest celebrates small retailers’ contributions to advocacy; BEA to host publishing technology startup competition for second year; De Gruyter to distribute Columbia University Press e-books

Vermont’s Phoenix Books is using a “community supported enterprise” model to open a 2,400-square-foot space in Rutland this August. This will be the third store for Mike DeSanto and Renée Reiner, his wife and business partner.