The benefits of shopping localWith the holiday shopping season around the corner, civic groups in Georgetown are encouraging local stores to keep their doors open later to make the Downtown Square a shopping destination.


The city’s Main Street Program, the Downtown Georgetown Association and the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce have been pushing a Shop Small Campaign since the beginning of October, Main Street Program Manager Shelly Hargrove said.


“The idea is to have a unified movement to spread the word of the importance of shopping Georgetown for the holiday season first,” she said. “It’s just so important to give back to your community, and this is a great way to do it.”



Making Georgetown a destination


The campaign encourages downtown businesses to adopt longer holiday hours and open their doors on Sundays. Nearly 30 businesses have agreed to stay open until 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights and open on Sundays from 1 to 5 p.m. The campaign started Oct. 2 and runs through Dec. 28.


Hargrove said the organizations are trying to encourage not only locals to shop in Georgetown, but also to bring in new dollars from outside the community. Having more and more businesses open their doors for extended hours will create more opportunities and incentives for travelers to come downtown and shop, she said.


“It’s just really hard to get people to travel to Georgetown if they think only one or two or three businesses might be open,” she said. “But if you have that united front, that’s the background of why we decided to do this campaign to kick off the shopping season.”


DGA President Kay Briggs also owns the Pink Poppy Artisan’s Boutique and has been participating in the campaign by extending her business hours. Her boutique normally stays open until 6 p.m., but she adopted the extended hours on Fridays and Saturdays as well as the Sunday hours.


“It makes more opportunities for people to come and shop,” she said.


Several businesses were already keeping their doors open for later hours, but more and more have signed onto the campaign, Briggs said. Some have already seen a benefit to staying open later, such as such as Diane Guame, the owner of Artisans Connect. She said many people come into town for the weekend and use Sunday as their day to shop.


“It really helps. Sundays can be some of my best days since visitors are coming in from out of town,” she said. “They’ll come downtown, have brunch or lunch, and then they want to roam around a little, and that traffic that comes in has led to some pretty successful Sundays.”


One of the first stores downtown to have later hours was All Things Kids. The toy store has opened its doors on Sundays and later on the weekends since it launched in 2011, owner Karen Soeffker said.


“Now with the added benefit with everybody else joining in as well, [the Square] feels like the holiday destination that it was designed to be,” she said. “Georgetown is booming; we have visitors from within a 50-mile radius on a regular basis.”


Soeffker said her business, which had grown between 10 and 20 percent per year, was up 30 percent from last year.


“It’s all about shopping small,” she said. “Every time somebody spends downtown, the revenue and sales tax goes back to the city, so the money stays home and supports the community.”



Effect on local sales taxes


An increase in the number of shopping and dining options has had an effect on local sales taxes—the downtown Georgetown area has consistently brought in at least 10 percent more in sales tax revenue each year since 2011, Georgetown Budget Manager Paul Diaz said. [polldaddy poll=9182663]


In the first 11 months of fiscal year 2014-15, the downtown area has brought in $538,449 in sales tax revenue, according to numbers from the city. Of the sales taxes brought in from downtown, roughly 66 percent comes from retail and 28 percent from dining.


“The downtown area is primarily driven by two sectors, the food sector and the retail sector, and both of those are doing very, very well,” Diaz said.


Sales taxes collected so far have been roughly 2.36 percent higher than this time last year, and Diaz said the city tends to see a spike in taxes collected during the holiday months. Georgetown collects about 7.5 percent of all sales taxes for the fiscal year in October, about 8 percent in November, and 10.5 to 12.5 percent in December.



Shopping events


The organizations have also encouraged shopping through annual and monthly events. The DGA held a night of shopping and trick-or-treating at the Boo Bash on Oct. 31, and the Main Street Program offers an evening of wine and shopping around the Square through the Ladies Night Out event Nov. 19.


The DGA also hosts shopping events each month on second Saturdays and first Fridays, which are held March through November. On Dec. 4 the association is hosting the 35th annual Christmas Stroll, which will feature more than 100 food and retail vendor booths on the Square. 


Hargrove said some of the businesses that are participating in the holiday hours campaign have never stayed open late or opened their doors on Sunday, so making the move during the holiday season is taking a big step. She is hoping having an extra day for customers to shop will allow the different businesses to break into a new market of shoppers.


Hargrove also said she hopes that if the businesses see good profits during the three-month campaign, those businesses will also consider keeping their doors open for more hours year-round.


“From a city standpoint, we want downtown to be a destination, and to be a destination, we have to be open hours that visitors can come, as well as locals,” she said. “We’re really just hoping that if we can concentrate [shop owners] to do that in this final fourth quarter of the year, that it’ll pay off.”


For a full list of downtown Georgetown shops offering holiday hours, visit http://visit.georgetown.org/holidayhours.