Huge support for Small Business Saturday

There was a 15 per cent rise in the amount of sales generated by Small Business Saturday this year, equating to £717m, £249m, or 53 per cent, more than when the event was first held in 2013.

According to a survey undertaken within 36 hours of the day, held this year on December 3, the spend was 15 per cent higher this year than in 2015 and more than half those surveyed said they spent more than usual in local shops.

More than 80 per cent of all local authorities covering the country actively supported the campaign on the day in one way or another, from staging or supporting business events to offering free parking to shoppers.

Meanwhile, people were busy on social media publicising the event using the hash tag SmallBusinessSaturdayUK, with 130,000 tweets being sent on the day itself and trending at number one in the UK and at number 5 globally.

As the campaign director for the event, Michelle Ovens, explained, the significant increase in spending was encouraging for participating stores and supporters and shows that awareness is growing of the drive to encourage consumers to buy from small, local shops.

However, she added that, while it was a great one-off event, it is important for consumers to regularly shop at local small businesses, as they are at the core of local communities and need support year-round to ensure that they can carry on being there for consumers when they need them.

Her words were echoed by the Federation of Small Businesses, which welcomed the news of the increase but encouraged supporters to support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) all year round, as “everyone benefits when small firms thrive”.