This July we ran a campaign to get you into your local independent retailers and out of the big chains. According to the 494 receipts you sent in we managed to put £16,900 into their tills. Well done!

Those of you who sent receipts in had 5% of the value added to your bonuses so I’d imagine there have been some Brexitesque reshuffling of the Bonus Leaderboard. Also, as promised, we’ve awarded £100 to the highest spender, and £50 to each of the 2 runners up. Here’s a couple of quotes from two of them:

“I shop locally as I feel that I am treated more as a person than just profit and I trust that I am getting what I actually need rather than just being sold something more than I need. You can really build relationships with local businesses and they make the high street a more interesting place to be. Local businesses in turn support local suppliers and this is brilliant for creating a vibrant, successful local area. I alway choose local when I can, as it’s a more pleasant and unique environment and stops the March of the anywhere town. As has been said before, use them or lose them!” – Suzie, BS16 2RP

“These days it’s so easy to go online to shop and to head to the large shopping centres, but it doesn’t have the same feeling as walking down the high street and knowing that the same family firm has been there for the past 50 years or so, and you know you’re going to get personal service from someone who really wants their business to flourish – unlike some of the shop assistants you come across in big chains.
If we want the luxury of having convenient high street shops, we need to support them all year round – and they’re usually a lot more competitive than you think, and will often match prices you’ve found on the Internet.
I’ll always support them.”

We realised that this competition was a bit unfair a few days into the campaign. So next time we’ll find a different way of awarding prizes. Perhaps frequency rather than amount of spend… Anyway, we hope this has helped some of our local independent retailers in the short-term, but also raised awareness in the long-term. We’d love to hear from anyone who has discovered places they would not have otherwise – please comment below 🙂

We’ll be doing something similar to this again very soon. In the meantime, please do remember to use your local independent shops, and as one FPLer told said “use them or lose them”.

Thanks!

Chris 🙂