My name is mike, im in Product Development at comcast. Were working to make things simple, easy and awesome. Good morning from wisconsin. This restaurant Grocery Store wants to become the Tourist Destination for main street, but they need some help. Were going to bring in our your business Makeover Team to make their Small Business saturday one to remember. Plus, i sit down with spaadministrator linda mcman to talk about how important it is to support your local businesses. And well show you exactly how the money you spend on your local businesses helps the entire community. When it comes to making this Small Business saturday the most profitable ever, we have your backs. Thats all coming up next on
your business. Hi, everyone. Welcome to a very special i decision of your business. Small business saturday. Thats the day that comes between black friday and cyber monday. We are all encouraged to shop local. Has a lot to offer. Its a college town, some Big Companies like Pratt Industries and Freida Lay Have Homes here. Recently its atlakted a lot of fast growing tech companies. As the city has changed, so have the Small Businesses. She grew this company from a farm stand into what it is today. She still has big dreams and she needs help. She is overoverwhelmed. So weve assembled a great team together. This place is fantastic. I love this. Jackie is the ownowner. She started out 16 years ago when she left her corporate job in chicago to buy a farm outside the city of wisconsin. She sold produce at the local Farmers Market. Belotteit
beloit. Restaurant is on the right. Store is on the left. We have a cafe. Customers love the place as is. Jackie told us shes got bigger dream. She wants to turn it into a branded regional chain of stores. Thats a long way off. So she wrote to us and asked for a makeover. Most people walk in and look up and look around and go wow and still dont know what to do. Space is loaded with charm. Its a distracting tangle of random merchandise. All jammed together. Theres a restaurant, a Grocery Store, a plant nursery. Commercial kitchen, used book section, a wine store and a gift shop. On top of that, inconsistency between her Digital Branding and
her Brick And Mortar branding. I cant say no to anything. Thats one of my biggest problems. We gathered together a s. W. A. T team of experts to shake things up and give jackie the boost she needs. Dana johnson is the trend expert who brought everything she knows to help jackie and her team take buschle and pehel and peck. There are good bones in this place. Really good. I honestly dont know where im supposed to go or do nerks. That thats what im working for. How do i look for product. How do i flow through the store. What are the opportunities here to help me understand that. Thats what i would be looking for. Do you feel like you could make big changes. I think we can make small changes that have a lot of impact. Aaron studied how people move through the store and developed a plan to upgrade the photography, sharpen the brand image and make it easier for customers to find what they need. He told jackie it all starts with one word. Consistency. Half the Battle Oftentimes is not being consistent. Doing it this way and this way. And how do we bring consistency so you have to workless and have the opportunity to work more. First steps started with finding a unified look and logo that identifies the store to customers. And the look he found was already right there. Right above the door. That canopy on the Out Door Exterior front entrance just anchors you. Its so strong. And what i love about it, its instant identity. Bushel and pecks equals that. When you think about expanding, if you open a new location
anywhere, you put that on the building and youre ready to go. People see it. Its classy yet comfy. Suggest add few directional signs and banners would eliminate confusion about where to go. We want them to come in and go yes, im in the right place. Opportunity to use graphics and photos. Aarons graphics came from new pictures which made the products look fantastic. Also offered to show jackie some Photography Basics so she could update Product Shots herself. Just using her cell phone. Basically what ive got set up here is a basic Lighting System that anybody can build. Just from parts from a hardware store. I built some basic stands out of wood. I bought some 10 shop lights with clamps and put daylight temperature led bulb. Will give you the most true color. Your smart tone, which were going to use today, doesnt have to try to balance the color. Really important to light a scene like this and brighten it up and make the colors and everything pop out of your picture. Secondly is angle. Just changing the angle of your photo can add so much more dynamics to it. You can shoot low, you can shoot overhead. Another aspect is focus. We want to pick out not only to have a tight focus sharp image, but what is the focus on the image. What are you trying to convey . In this particular scene by staggering the bottles so it will focus on the foreground and fade out the back. So the back two bolts in this case would sort of fade out. Right. Enough to where you can read them, but it just adds a little more of a dynamic. Great, i think im going to make
one of these. Its great. Next came dana. She brought her plan to revise the site. Im excited to be here with you today and really dig into your shop. So at first glance, i think its really great that your shop truly tells a story. You go to your about page here, which is very important, you have access to 35 million buyers across the world on etsy. Thats a lot of people. You can really share your story and give them an inside look to the behind the scenes of the farms that you work with, really highlighting that local feature that you guys are showing here in the retail location. Incorporated all the new pictures into the etsy apparatus program. They presented to jackie. Are you ready to see new and improved shop. Okay. So you worked with the photographer and got some really great clean new branding images. They see the variety of hot sauces that you offer. The beet ketchup, i hear is quite the rage. One of the most popular products. All of these great images. When you tag things on etsy, what that means is youre calling to all of those customers who may not know you exist a. We are Garying Ingearing up fo holiday season. I notice in category listing, not a tag that says gifts. Your shop has incredible hot sauce, pickles. Bloody mary mix. All these great things. As a shopper, i think, okay, i maybe would look for a food gift or maybe look for just the word gift period. I want to on board you on to etsy plus which is our latest tool that were offering sellers. Whats great about etsy plus, youre able to customize your shop. One of the options is you can add up to three or four images
that will be a carcarousel. Its a great place to feature best selling items and really put more of a visual aspect to it. Youve also got promoted listings. Just like we talked about, if i as a shopper type in hot sauce because youre doing promoted listings. Its going to push your item up to the top to be searched quicker. To be found. The third thing is about the restocking option is really going to be able to notify customers if its back in stock. So that youre not losing out on opportunities for those shoppers to come back. Especially during this holiday season. So we know from data from etsy that when our sellers offer Free Shipping, they sell a lot more items, right, but we also know that youre a Small Business. You cant do that. Its kind of unrealistic to think in that way. What that really means is rethink your pricing so that
those prices, those Shipping Prices can really be baked into the cost of your item so that you can bring to life a fair and competitive Pricing Structure for your shipping. Right. So do you think that someone is more likely or is more likely to buy a 23 item that is Free Shipping versus a 15 item that we put shipping on to. Yes. Thats something to think about. Also you have to bake that into your listing prices. So tell me whats your favorite feature that you see so far of the differences. I think just the general appearance is the opening the introduction to the shop that someone is going to see when they click into something really tells the story a lot more than it has. I think thats great. Photography is just great. Being able to put that online and it just likes really different than it did. Looking forward to using it. Im so happy. Honestly i cant wait to get shopping myself. You made it. Of you got through the day. Cheers. Coffee and tee. What did you this. I thought it was great. I got to learn a lot of things from a lot of different people and i especially loved seeing all the imagery, from everyone. More simple than i thought. Okay. So you in the beginning you told me you felt overwhelmed. Right. You feel less overwhelmed, more overwhelmed. I feel as overwhelmed as always, but i feel like some steps have been taken to get to the next level in terms of especially for the holiday season, being ready for that and not being overwhelmed by having to make everything perfect by myself and having the resources of other people to help me do that. You wrote to us and you said, i need help. Right. Was this the help you needed. The yes, absolutely. Definitely a jump start and a kick start at getting some things done that i just dont think otherwise i would have been able to do on my own. Sounds good. I wish to the best of luck. I think you have Amazing Products here. Its a i had so much fun Walking Around your store and i
am just excited to see you keep growing. Thanks. Im excited too. There is no bigger supporters of Small Business saturday than the nations Small Business administration. With me here in the studio is administrator to talk about why she thinks this day is so important. So nice to have you in new york. Thank you for coming to our studios. This is our day. This is our holiday. This is it. Saturday. November 24. Shop small. Visit your Small Businesses. They make kmucommunities. We need to support our Business Owners. Go find ones you dont know. Go into a restaurant, have lunch. Go to a cafe and have a cup of coffee in the morning. Just wonder in and out and go with friends. Go with family. Its a great day to go shopping and so many people have told me that when they do shop Small Businesses, especially on Small Business saturday, that they
just love it. 73 have a positive comment to make. We want to convert Small Business saturday. Its in between thanksgiving and cyber monday. Right after black friday. Shop small saturday. And start that let it be a trend that youre starting and keep shopping small throughout the year. I sound like a broken record. I always say, if you do not, those companies are not going to be there. Dont go to your toy store in the neighborhood to buy some of your Holiday Gifts and that toy store is going to go away. That simple. Typically found Small Businesses ask how am i going to compete. How do i compete with the Big Box Stores. What can you offer they cant . Niche products sometimes, but its service, its being that part of the neighborhood i mean, what name do you see on the back of the Little League shirt. Exactly. Yes. Its joes pizza or the community bank. Its the Small Businesses in those communities that support the local sports teams and support all the fundraisingers. The bake sales to send a band off on a competition. They do. Theyre the glue in the communities. So important to keep them alive and well. So i want to spend time talking about the spa. You made the promise to. 47 states. So you are almost done with this. Yes. What have you learned and what are you telling people . What does our audience not know about thesba. I dont think people understand the full scope. How many of you think its about loans. Youll see hands go up all over the room. If i say, do you really realize we dont make the loan. We guarantee loans. Do you also understand we have all of these resources to help
businesses start, grow, expand. And sometimes recover from disaster. We have our score offices. Spdc offices. Womens business centers. Veterans outreach centers. Lets go quickly. Score is amazing because you can go into score and get an adviser for free. All of these services are for free. Scores manned by volunteers. Theyre giving back executives who are still there. Markets representatives or experts in other fields and you can go and let them take a look at your business. Right. Hope you in the business plan. Marketing plan. Its incredible resource right there. It is. Someone to work oneonone with you. Spadove and you can go to different states, different
districts and find out take advantage of the resources. I am the chief advocate for 30 million Small Businesses around the country. I want to make sure they know about the resources that are available to them. Not only access to capital, but also the Mentoring Aspect and the actual connecting with businesses that might be beneficial to them. Helping them export because we have no National Trade department. Helping them look at those markets outside of the united states. Its a very robust. Im very proud of what were doing. Lets end with one last thing. Shop small. I found something really amazing in Beloit Wisconsin where i was for the show. Great beet ketchup. Bushel and pecks beet ketchup. And i also found this amazing popcorn on the cob. So you stick it in the microwave
and it pops on the cob. See, there you go. Niche business. Shop local. Shop small. November 24, saturday. See you in a small store. All right. Yes, you will. Weve launched the third season of our podcast been there built that and in honor of Small Business saturday, talk to three Small Business owners who faced a really tough time in their business and overcame them. Bruce is the owner eer of oasi in new york. Told me inspiring story about being a Cancer Survivor and keeping her business going. I hope you get a chance to listen to this episode and if you do, please leave some comments. We love to hear what you think. So go check it out. Its called been there, built there. Get it wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, Small Business saturday show from Beloit Wisconsin continues. We take a stroll down the main
street with city manager, Lori Curtis Luther who tells us what the town doing to get people to shop local. And a look back over the years to see what businesses around the country have done to attract customers on Small Business saturday. T customers ol business saturday. The community doesnt just have Small Businesses, it is Small Businesses. And thats why American Express founded Small Business saturday. So, this year lets all get up, get out and shop small on november 24th. I got croissant. Small business saturday. A small way to make a big difference. Bit in the last 20 years. Theres a whole group of people concentrated on turning this city into what it can become. One of those people is laurie who is the city manager of beloit. I had a great time in this hi city. I would love to get a tour from you. Were right in our Downtown Area and we have a couple of businesses here. Stanton shoes and austins barber shop. They have been here for over 100 years. The same family running the store . Yes. Its been in their family for over 100 years. How have you been able to get all of a these businesses to wo together, to try to revive Downtown Beloit . Downtown beloit has one of the oldest associates created 30 years ago to really promote this physical area of the city and businesses here. Do you guys do this all year round . I know you do a lot around Small Business saturday but what else do you do . There are events all the time. This area here and the block at seton grand are closed every saturday morning for a Farmers Market. Many of our store fronts started at the Farmers Market. This is one of them. I love candy stores. Oh, yes. Youre getting gummies . Yes. How long has this store been around they b started as a vendor i our Farmers Market and came in this space. Were thrilled to have them. They have home made fudge. Youdg guys make it back ther . We do. One thing i noticed about beloit you have these great restaurants. We do. We have some brandnew ones. Lucys burger bars has stuffed burger, even a macaroni and cheese stuffed burger. Thats my 11yearolds dream. Two of his favorite dinners it mashed into one thing. Smells ve