The annual holiday whiplash is happening at Uniquitiques in downtown Hillsborough, as the shop’s owner, Jeannie Petterson, quickly replaces Halloween cobweb decorations with Christmas snowflakes.
The bed of an antique pickup in the front yard of the store she shares with Sister Mine Designs, now contains reindeer and trees instead of ghosts and spiders.
The holidays are a special time to experience and explore Hillsborough, and for many of its small businesses, it’s time to kick into overdrive and go big to attract shoppers. Despite the breakneck pace, Petterson is happy to get the holidays rolling.
“The earlier it is the better for me and my shop,” she said. “We have an ongoing battle because we don’t always get the traffic received by businesses on Churton Street. But we businesses do try to work together and I’m excited to work with other people. But I sometimes have to march to the beat of my own drum. I’m fine with going all out. We’ll have music, food, drinks. We will work through the season and sleep sometime in January.”
Throughout December, the town will roll out events almost every weekend. And while each event will present opportunities for small businesses to make sales, only one — Shop Small Saturday — is singularly focused on bringing shoppers to smaller retailers. The excitement and need among business owners is palpable.
“It’s huge,” said Jeannine Rogers, who owns Spiral Studios Jewelry at 115 N. Churton St. “For a small business owner to get the support from the community is really big. Especially when a lot of people shop online these days. Hillsborough is such a wonderful town to own a business because we get a lot of support from local community.”
This year, many of the town’s small businesses are seeing a more concerted and intentional effort to promote Shop Small Saturday from the Hillsborough/Orange County Chamber of Commerce, and from Visit Hillsborough.
“This was a really good opportunity just to revamp and restart and see what we could do as our first sort of collaborative efforts and marketing and promotion for an event,” Amanda Boyd said of working for the first time with the Chamber CEO Scott Czechlewski. Boyd is executive director at the Alliance for Historic Hillsborough, which oversees Visit Hillsborough. “It’s worked really well because now we’re able to get more and more content and spread the Shop Small Saturday campaign and be able to, on a digital front, post in a more intimate way of meeting the people who you’ll shop with and who provide the shopping experience in Hillsborough. I think it’s a more unique and personalized way to share Hillsborough on a digital front for marketing, rather than just make the day about consumerism. So, that’s our approach for this year.”
Similarly, Chamber CEO Scott Czechlewski saw an opportunity to boost promotion of Shop Small Saturday by taking a two-prong approach.
“In the first discussion between the Chamber and Visit Hillsborough, Amanda and I saw that there was some opportunity to really draw more attention to the event,” he said. “Visit Hillsborough took on the social media aspect with posts, interviewing business owners and creating videos. Member Success Coordinator Erica Isley visited businesses to hand out marketing materials, like Shop Small stickers and bags.”
Many of Hillsborough’s downtown business owners have noticed the extra efforts to promote the event and are hopeful of the fruit it may bear.
“I love Shop Small Saturday as it kicks off the local shopping season with a bang,” said Lindsley Bowen, owner of Carlisle & Linney Vintage Jewelry at 112 S. Churton St. “We’re lucky to have a great community where many already see the importance of shopping small and buying local. But this day is also a great way to introduce clients in how buying local and shopping small keeps tax dollars for our local government to put back into infrastructure, housing, health services and more.”
“Shop Small Saturday, in and of itself, is a wonderful thing,” said Bryan Pearson, who owns Antonia’s at 101 N. Churton St. “I can certainly see the bump. It’s certainly being paid attention to by the public and we’re cognizant of that and we very much appreciate it. We’re looking forward to a super-busy weekend.
“This town is unbelievably symbiotic in terms of how everybody works together,” Person added. “I really like that.”
“Shop Small Saturday is our time to be able to be with our customers who enjoy the holiday season,” said Kelli Puckett, who owns Re-Inventaged Home Decor & More with her husband, Tod. “We have a unique atmosphere in the shop. It’s a very positive, happy place. We get to celebrate holidays with our families, but we also get to celebrate the holidays with our customers, which is nice because they become like family.”
Re-Inventaged Home Decor & More is at 120 S. Churton St. Uniquitiques is at 125 E. King St.