May 9, 2013

Supporting local business

If you know most Southern girls, we love our monogram on just about everything...towels, sheets, shirts, blankets, pillows, door sign, shower curtain, soap, etc.

I think when my husband and I got married, he was a bit overwhelmed by all the things people gave us with our initials on it ( I, on the other hand, was on Cloud 9). When my friends from England came to Alabama, they had never seen such a thing in a normal household.  They told me it was very "Queen Elizabeth"/royal thing to do. Oh, well...sure, you can associate southern charm with royalty, I don't mind. :)

The one thing we haven't had monogrammed are our towels. I have been meaning to get them done for a year, but so may things took priority over getting them done. I recently stumbled upon a friend from college who opened her own applique shop and thought to myself it was a perfect opportunity to get them monogrammed.

Besides excited to get them all prettified I was happy to support  a local business. The woman running the business is a stay at home Mom who decided it was best for her family to quit her day job and raise her baby, but she also makes a little money on the side to help contribute to her homes income.



I have to admire my friend and give her major kudos. Its difficult in this day of age for a woman to quit a full time job to stay at home and not get flack for it. Just last last week, Kaitlyn over at Wifessionals wrote a post on this very controversial topic. (Go read it, its a fantastic post!) But I digress....

I admire my friend for using her skills to help out her family and not allowing it interfering with raising her child. I love that she is working for herself and being creative on how to earn some type of income. I would much rather see a small business flourish than a larger chain store. I have a small side business and I appreciate it so much when someone decides to buy from me rather than a large corporation.

 I also find that smaller local businesses are much better to work with - they have great customer service, make the effort to get to know you personally and are much more inclined to provide great customer service. If they didn't, probably most of us wouldn't solicit their business again. Sometimes local is more expensive, like produce from farmers markets, but the product is top quality and you know exactly how they fertilize, cultivate and transport their produce to you (HUGE factors when buying "clean" for us).

Behind every great small business (as I have noticed), you find people who love what they do, are passionate about their product and want to provide a wonderful service to their community - and that's worth buying from. 


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