You, The Resident, Business Men and Women of Downtown Staten Island,are the cornerstone of making our economy work for everyone. Small business is always at the forefront of growth & innovation. Organizations that support local ownership & self reliance have been advocating on behalf of those communities for decades. The Institute for Local Self Reliance is one of those organizations and is celebrating their 40th anniversary. Here is their top 10 list which TWOB supports & endorses.
According to the Institute for Local Self Reliance, here are 10 reasons to support locally owned businesses:
1. Local Character and Prosperity
In an increasingly homogenized world, communities that preserve their one-of-a-kind businesses and distinctive character have an economic advantage.
2. Community Well-Being
Locally owned businesses build strong communities by sustaining vibrant town centers, linking neighbors in a web of economic and social relationships, and contributing to local causes.
3. Local Decision-Making
Local ownership ensures that important decisions are made locally by people who live in the community and who will feel the impacts of those decisions.
4. Keeping Dollars in the Local Economy
Compared to chain stores, locally owned businesses recycle a much larger share of their revenue back into the local economy, enriching the whole community.
5. Job and Wages
Locally owned businesses create more jobs locally and, in some sectors, provide better wages and benefits than chains do.
6. Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship fuels America’s economic innovation and prosperity, and serves as a key means for families to move out of low-wage jobs and into the middle class.
7. Public Benefits and Costs
Local stores in town centers require comparatively little infrastructure and make more efficient use of public services relative to big box stores and strip shopping malls.
8. Environmental Sustainability
Local stores help to sustain vibrant, compact, walkable town centers-which in turn are essential to reducing sprawl, automobile use, habitat loss, and air and water pollution.
9. Competition
A marketplace of tens of thousands of small businesses is the best way to ensure innovation and low prices over the long-term.
10. Product Diversity
A multitude of small businesses, each selecting products based, not on a national sales plan, but on their own interests and the needs of their local customers, guarantees a much broader range of product choices.
[via ISLR.org]
Ettore grew up working in the restaurant & catering business from the age of 12. He graduated from the College of Staten Island with a Bachelors’s in Mathematics & Finance in 1985. In 1986 he started Chez Vous caterers from the basement of his home in Dongan Hills and caters parties at homes and businesses in the tri-state area. In Oct 1987 he rented the first floor of Edgewater Hall at 691 Bay Street. A few years later he added the party rental division to Chez Vous. In 1998 he purchased Edgewater Hall and renovated the first and second floors making them party spaces. Shortly thereafter he purchased from his tenant the cellar bar creating Dock Street Underground a live music venue. His creative projects include his CD Sweet on You, his book, It’s Your Right to be Fit, Sexed, and Happy, So Claim It, and he is developing a TV series called Business Underground. His record labels Hanz On Music and Dock Street Records has produced Method Man’s “The Meth Lab.” and produces 2nd Generation Wu projects.
