Local Business

I had a conversation with a local business owner today and he mentioned a program called 3:50. The idea is to imagine 3 businesses that you can't imagine doing without in our community and think what would happen if they are no longer here. The next step is to spend $50 a month in those three businesses. Purchasing goods and services that you were already going to buy but might not think about doing from a local source. This keeps money in our community,if fosters a sense of community and it keeps the local businesses open.

We have a huge amount of leakage in our retail sales. This is cause by many factors, not the least of which is we have so many people that work outside of the county. It is convenient to stop on the way home from work and buy what we need. Think about the ramifications of this. The sales tax dollars that we are spending are being left in Forsyth, Guilford, Surry, etc. Now these are nice folks and they have to survive as well but there is the old saying that charity begins at home.

Many of the projects we are working on in Economic Development are devoted to the idea of helping local businesses grow and prosper. We will be talking about this a great deal more in the days and weeks to come, in the mean time, give some serious thought to buying local made, grown, developed or at least sold goods. It will make a difference. The link to the web site is: http://www.the350project.net/supporter_graphics/350_accepts_tou.pdf