Just hours after Black Friday ended, Columbia residents packed into local storefronts searching for Small Business Saturday deals.
Originally created by American Express in 2010, Small Business Saturday, which is always the day after Black Friday, has grown into an unofficial holiday that promotes shopping at small businesses.
Nicole Morris, owner of The Tin Roof Monogram & Gift, said Small Business Saturday has become a favorite for her and the staff.
“We’re staffed with as many people as we can get to work, and we stay on top of keeping the store stocked while prioritizing customer service,” Morris said.
Cassie Huckabay, a customer at The Tin Roof on Saturday and fellow small business owner of My Fair Ellie, got to experience the day from both perspectives.
“From the business perspective, having my customers that save their shopping for this day is saying to me, ‘I support your business, and I want to support you on this day,’ so that’s really nice,” she said. “But, as a customer, seeing what the businesses have put out is great, and I love to congratulate them on another year of business.”
Customers shopped throughout the day Saturday and picked out gifts such as bath and body products, home decor, kitchen supplies, clothing and wine and beer made in Missouri.
One item that has continued to be a top seller for The Tin Roof are Bogg Bags, which are rubber tote bags. Morris said that The Tin Roof and Dillard’s are the only places in town that sell the bags and that The Tin Roof gets more inventory.
“We just received an order of Bogg Bags a couple of weeks ago that was 800 pounds, so they had to forklift it off the truck to get it in the store,” Morris said.
Vickie Spain, the owner of Castaway Yarns in Columbia, said she has participated in Small Business Saturday for five years.
“The customers have been great; they’ve been coming by to support the shop,” Spain said. “It’s been nonstop all day.”
Hitt Records, a record store located downtown, participated in a holiday shopping event geared toward music lovers called Record Store Day Black Friday.
Kyle Cook, co-owner of Hitt Records, said the event brought in lots of customers.
“There is this entire wall of brand-new records available,” Kyle said.
For this event, according to Record Store Day’s website, some titles might be exclusively released at independent record stores, which might or might not be available to other retailers in the future.
Small Business Saturday will be on Nov. 25 next year.
