Shop After Hours and support small businesses this summer
BY KADIE TAYLOR
THE LAFAYETTE SUN
CHAMBERS COUNTY — An evening of shopping, supporting and celebrating, The Valley Local is holding a Shop After Hours on Thursday, July 9, from 7 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. ET.
“Shop After Hours is where local businesses are open later than usual, so that way people have more opportunity to get out and shop in the evening,” Director of the Valley Local Sara Crutchfield said. “We do it on a Thursday, because it just gives community members something to look forward to in a way to support local during the week, to just break up the going to work, going home kind of thing. It’s to get people out and about shopping and eating in the community.”
Crutchfield said community members can visit each participating location during the event and enter their name for a prize drawing. If a local spends $50 or more at any location on merchandise or services, they receive three entries instead of one. The prizes include three winning baskets, each featuring $75 gift cards to partnering businesses, plus additional items and surprises.
“Last year when we hosted this event, all of the locations that we hosted it at got great feedback stating how well they did for that day,” she said. “The month of July tends to be a little slow for locally-owned businesses, with people just traveling and stuff. So having that little extra boost of people getting out and supporting the local businesses is huge for the business owners, and the community enjoys it because they get to win prizes, but they also get to save with the specials businesses have and shop later in the evening when stores are typically closed.”
With many summer weddings, baby showers and birthdays, Crutchfield said the Shop After Hours is an opportunity for locals to purchase unique gifts from local businesses and begin Christmas shopping early.
“It's a great time to buy little gifts for anything that you have coming up, but also Christmas is six months away, and you can never start Christmas shopping too early, so this is kind of like Christmas in July,” she said. “You can go in and start checking those gifts off your Christmas list, so this event is great for gifts for teachers, birthdays, weddings, babies and all the things. This is just a great opportunity to be able to get some more items to get you through the next few months.”
Ultimately, Crutchfield said this event is a reminder for community members to shop small and support local businesses when possible.
“Please just remember to support locally owned businesses,” she said. “I don't think I can say that enough. They are the ones who support all the community events. They are the first ones that are asked for sponsorships from students with the schools and everything else, and I just want to make sure that people truly understand that they have to be supported to be able to give back, so just always support local first.”
For more information, follow The Valley Local - Event and Main Page on Facebook.
