CFIB launches campaign to encourage buying from small businesses

Toronto – With seven out of 10 business owners worried that customers won’t come back and many still struggling to pay bills, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business’s new #SmallBusinessEveryDay campaign is designed to amplify actions to support local businesses.

The campaign includes a small business recovery dashboard that will be updated weekly. Currently, the dashboard shows about half of businesses across Canada are fully open, but only one in three are at normal staffing levels and one in five are making normal sales. Three-quarters of consumers report not spending as much overall as they did before the COVID-19 pandemic, yet almost half report spending more at larger retailers, many of whom were allowed to stay open when the pandemic hit.

“It’s critical to our neighbourhoods and, more generally, to Canada’s economic recovery that we move the needle on small business recovery and help businesses who have been starved of sales survive,” said Laura Jones, executive vice-president at CFIB.

At SmallBusinessEveryDay.ca consumers will find a series of doable challenges like walking to a local business and buying a treat for a neighbour. The website also will promote the many other Canadian campaigns that have been launched to support local businesses and has tools for business owners such as free posters they can use to thank customers for doing their part. The posters are also available in French, Arabic, Simplified Chinese (Mandarin/Cantonese) and Punjabi.

“There is a parade of fantastic initiatives across Canada to help businesses recover from the unprecedented financial and emotional stress left in the wake of COVID-19 shutdowns. Our landing page is a one-stop shop for everyone to find out about all the great floats in the parade. #SmallBusinessEveryDay reminds us that small actions like buying a cupcake or a cup of coffee, finding a local business or recommending a business to others on social media can make a big difference to small business survival,” Jones said.

The #SmallBusinessEveryDay campaign is an extension of CFIB’s annual Small Business Saturday (during Small Business Week in October) and will run from now until the end of the year. The campaign is supported by Scotiabank, Chase Merchant Services, eBay Canada, Facebook and Interac Corp.