Aug 6, 2009

Retail therapy: Customers asked to spend $50 a month at 3 businessesBy Jane BurnsMadison.com

Sometimes, it pays to get mad at Oprah.

Cinda Baxter did, and the result has been a Buy Local initiative that has spread nationally and found scores of supporters in Wisconsin and Dane County.

The 3/50 Project began this spring, sprouting from a notion Baxter suggested on her blog (www.alwaysupward.com), “Always Upward.” The idea is simple: Consumers pick three locally owned businesses they wouldn’t want to see disappear and try to spend a total of $50 a month among the stores.

“She’s got a good hook,” says Orange Schroeder, who owns Orange Tree Imports on Monroe Street and knows Baxter through a trade organization both have worked with. “It’s the same message — that supporting local business is good — but it’s a more specific action plan. It’s a clever way of giving people a goal.”

Schroeder displays a flier in her shop, something that retailers can download off the 3/50 Project’s website (www.the350project.net). Besides the logo, the fliers cite statistics from an economic study that says for every $100 spent by consumers at a locally owned business, $68 of it stays in the community through taxes, payroll and other expenditures, as opposed to $43 for a national chain.

“It sums things up pretty well,” says Craig Kuenning, general manager of Quivey’s Grove, who has signed on as a participant and downloaded the 3/50 logo from Baxter’s site to put on his restaurant’s website (there are also decals available for businesses to put on their doors). “It points out how important those choices are in terms of keeping money in the community. It’s the real trickle-down economy.”

Baxter is based in the Twin Cities, where she used to own a gift and stationery shop but now is a retail consultant, writer and speaker. Managing the 3/50 Project has turned into a full-time job for her time-wise, although she doesn’t make any money off it except when it’s the subject of her speaking appearances or consulting jobs. The 3/50 site has 8,000 registered participants, a Facebook fan page with nearly 14,000 fans and a website that has had 108,000 unique visitors since the end of March.

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