Small Business Saturday Will Last The Rest Of The Year In Bangor

2020 is just something. Actually, there's a word that comes to mind immediately that I'd like to use, but in the interest of good taste, I'll keep that one to myself. But here we are, less than two weeks away from Thanksgiving, which in any normal year, would mean we're leading up to Black Friday, and of course, Small Business Saturday.

This time a year ago, hustle and bustle was in the air, as people were ready to head out in force to get their Christmas shopping done for the year. And on SBS, folks would descend upon downtown, and shop in our community. Whether it was for clothes, or out getting lunch at a local restaurant while you're getting all the other shopping done.

But this year of course, everything has changed. But, the city of Bangor has decided we're going to extend Small Business Saturday all the way through the end of the year.

The idea is, if we can spread the event out, it will help take the stress out of the one day shopping, and not cause any extra crowding in downtown businesses. While at the same time, providing local spots with a chance to have specials running for weeks instead of one day, which kind of helps everyone out.

Lots of businesses in town have also really upped their game as far as what can be purchased on their websites, should you not want to spend too much time in a store. Downtown Coordinator Betsy Lundy explained it to Fox Bangor like this:

A lot of the local shops and restaurants have created really rich online shopping formats so stores that didn’t have online shopping before, now they have online shopping...In many of the stores downtown, you can order online, have it shipped to your house, or you can order online and stop at one of our convenient 15-minute parking spots downtown and the stores will run your order out to you and some of them even will deliver to your house.

So as the shopping season starts to get into full swing, there's some good news for you. And, an opportunity to keep your shopping as local as possible. While some things may need to come from a big box store, WalMart will probably survive if most of your gifts were from local stores. So, shop local!!!!!