Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Small Business Saturday will follow Black Friday

Saturday, Nov. 26, will be the second annual Small Business Saturday. The day, sponsored by American Express, is dedicated to supporting small businesses during one of the busiest shopping weekends of the year, the Small Business Saturday website says. The impact on local economies is very significant.

Last year, sales were 28 percent higher than the same Saturday in 2009, Mary Ann Fitzmaurice, American Express's senior vice president, told Kate Rogers of FoxBusiness. This year, 89 million customers are expected to shop at small businesses. (Read more)

Small Business Saturday may be more important to local economies than Black Friday or Cyber Monday, Peralte Paul of East Atlanta Patch writes. The 177,445 small businesses in Georgia, reported by the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy in 2006, accounted for 98 percent of employers in the state and 46 percent of Georgia's private-sector employment, the Bureau of the Census reports. "That means the lion's share of Georgia's total economic output," projected by JP Morgan Chase to be $364 billion for 2011, "will come from small businesses." (Read more)

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