18 Locally-Owned Businesses to Get Gifts for Kids this Holiday Season

Helping Local Retail Neighbors Make it Through the Pandemic One Receipt at a Time

Shopping has Changed

With all the changes in the year 2020, perhaps the biggest everyday change has been the shift in shopping habits. Online shopping increased in the Spring and continued to increase into the Summer (Forbes). For the most part, these increases benefited the large, national chains that were able to eliminate barriers to online shopping. However, this didn't translate into simply more Amazon sales--with more online shopping overall, and competitors upping their game, Amazon's share of online sales has actually decreased (Digital Commerce 360).

Where does that leave local retail? Most local retail stores don't have access to streamlined online shopping experiences and depend upon foot traffic for sales. According to Adobe Analytics survey data, "44 percent of consumers plan to support small and local retailers this holiday season, with 38 percent saying they will make a deliberate effort to shop at smaller retailers throughout the holiday season." (Adobe.com).

Shopping (Local or Online) is Engrained in Habit

I think it's fair to say that we all find the online 'national retailer' shopping habit is a hard one to break, but this holiday season I'm looking to break the habit in order to support local businesses.

"Breaking habits isn’t about stopping but substituting"

(Psychology Today). With that in mind, my approach to thinking local when holiday shopping will include the following steps suggested by the foregoing article to break the online shopping habit:

Define the concrete behavior you want to change or develop
- I want to support local businesses rather than ordering everything from national retailers.
Identify the triggers
- I tend to order online when I'm feeling overwhelmed (which is, to be fair, a lot of the time in 2020).
Deal with the triggers
- I need to stop procrastinating and shopping while overwhelmed, or declare a day of community retail support.
Develop a substitute plan
- Maybe I should create a list of local retailers where I could find gifts for the kids.
Change the larger pattern
- Time for a new set of bookmarks on my browser--Local Retailers.
Use prompts
- I'll mark that local shopping day on my calendar. And follow the local retailers on Facebook and Twitter. And check this fabulous list of local retailers I just found on Macaroni Kid Franklin.
Get supports
- I should talk to my family and friends about this and see if they'll join me in my effort.
Support and reward yourself
- When I shop local for gifts, while I'm there, I'll get something for myself, too.
Be persistent and patient
- To be fair, this should be the 2020 motto for all living creatures. But if we all work together, we'll break the online habit and make sure that local retail makes it into 2021 and beyond!

Local Retailers Highly Recommended for Kids' Gifts this Holiday Season

With all that in mind, and without further ado, here is a list of hyper-local retailers that come highly recommended for kids' gifts this holiday season.

We'll be updating this list and possibly creating a Shopping Guide as the holiday season progresses!