NORTH ANDOVER — For years, the phrase "Think global, act local" has been associated with the environmental movement.
Activists proclaimed that if people helped the environment in their own backyards, they would in turn be helping the global environment.
But a growing number of small retailers here and across the country are adapting a version of that phrase, trying to encourage people to shop and buy locally to help Main Street shopping districts survive and even thrive in an era of big-box megastores and sprawling suburban shopping malls.
In North Andover, a group of Main Street businesses has formed a merchants association, the first such organization in decades, with the aim of helping each other prosper by encouraging local shoppers to give their stores a chance.
In Haverhill, some Wingate Street shop owners have taken it upon themselves to print marketing brochures that are being distributed in the lobbies of nearby apartment and condo complexes, alerting new residents to the shopping opportunities right outside their front doors.
And in Andover, several merchants have teamed up with a Route 114 gift shop owner to join a nationwide movement dubbed the "3/50 Project," which educates consumers about the power of their purchases. For example, if they buy of $50 of merchandise at three different stores once a month, the ripple effect will make for healthier downtowns.
"People don't realize, if you don't spend money in your downtown, you won't have a downtown," said John Hugo, manager of the Andover Bookstore, part of a chain of three, family-owned shops located in Andover, Marblehead and Newburyport.
Hugo and Jean Smith, owner of Sense of Wonder on Route 114 in North Andover, have climbed on board the "3/50 Project," which has already taken hold in places like Portsmouth, N.H., Portland, Maine, and the state of Vermont, among others.
"Andover is a little behind," John Hugo said. "But it's great to see it's gotten started and that we're moving in the right direction."
Added value
Jean Smith and her husband were lawyers in Boston for years, but decided to escape the rat race, opening a store in Reading in the mid-1990s before moving to North Andover in 2006.
Since they started, Smith said, they have seen the impact that superstores and the Internet have had on their business. They've seen a number of small businesses fail as they've tried to maintain their business during a recession.
Rather than complain about their plight, Smith decided to join the 3/50 movement, which was started in Minneapolis by Cynda Baxter, a business consultant and former retailer herself. Baxter has taken a proactive approach, promoting the inherent value of local stores to the local economy.
Using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, word-of-mouth, and local media outlets to spread the word, the 3/50 Project has taken off around the country. Fliers are showing up in shop windows and on store counters, including in Smith's store in the Eaglewood Shops plaza on Route 114, with the slogan: "Saving the Brick and Mortars our nation is built on."
Baxter, on the 3/50 Web site, says that for every $100 spent in locally owned and operated stores, $68 returns to the community in the form of taxes, payroll and other expenditures such as donations to local Little League teams and Rotary clubs.
But $100 spent in big-box stores like Best Buy or Target returns just $43 to the local economy. And spending money online typically returns nothing.
Smith, of Sense of Wonder, said the local spending has even more of an impact on stores like hers, because she buys some of her products from local artists.
Betsy Powers, president of the Andover Downtown Business Association, knows first-hand the power of the local pocketbook.
For eight years, she ran Culinary Concepts in downtown Andover. In January, she shut the doors to her store after the building it was located in was sold.
"I have had to tell so many people that they went to Wiliam-Sonoma to buy a cookie sheet when they could have bought it from me," Powers said. "My prices were the same as theirs, and we had free wrapping. Something as simple as a $20 apron, if they'd bought it from me, I'd still be open."
She said the idea behind 3/50 and the work being done by her downtown group — offering discount buttons and organizing events to draw shoppers to Andover's shopping district — will help everyone.
Working together
The same kind of effort is going on in North Andover, where several local businesses formed the North Andover Merchants Association four months ago to keep local shoppers from heading to the Loop or up to New Hampshire to buy items they could get right on Main Street.
"We haven't had a merchants association in 15 years," said Heather Norwood-Cole, who owns Top Notch Cuts at 73 Water St. "We already have 80 members. If we help our own, we'll grow as a community and help each other succeed in business."
While they haven't joined the 3/50 Project, the merchants group is using many of the same concepts.
"I talk to people all day," Norwood-Cole said, noting that she's overbooked and gives referrals all the time to other local salons, in addition to locally owned and operated restaurants and specialty shops.
"We need to work together instead of against each other," she said. "It's been a phenomenal outpouring of success. All of these people have joined."
The group has its own Web site, and is touting personalized service and customer-friendly shopping.
"If you can pass 1,000 businesses to get to one that gives great service, it's worth it," Norwood-Cole said. "I'll drive out of my way for that. That's how businesses stay in business forever. We have to go back to the old way of doing business."
In Haverhill, shop owners are also trying to get noticed.
Along with the usual Chamber of Commerce effort to draw shoppers with the annual shoppers stroll and other downtown activities, one sector of the business district has taken a more aggressive approach.
Pat Bruno, owner of Positive Images, a gift shop on Wingate Street, said there are a half-dozen specialty stores in what she calls a "little Soho" one street over from the main business thoroughfare of Washington Street that often get little notice.
This year, the owners of the stores — mostly galleries and high-end gift shops — got together and printed up a brochure that invites residents of the Cordovan, for example, to "wander over to Wingate." The brochure includes a small map and an invitation to "meet your neighbors, discover shops and services in your neighborhood.
"What we hear from our customers is that it's an experience to come here," Bruno said. "It's not just running into a dollar store. People come in and stay for an hour. They like the music, the smells, the light. We try to create an environment.
"We are trying to say, 'Use your neighborhood'. Jump off the train at night and know that you can pop in and get a card, or go downtown for coffee. Just wander around and shop."
