Shop Small Saturday is the one day each year that Americans stick a large middle finger in the faces of places like Wal-Mart, Macy's and Starbucks -- just to name a few. The Saturday after Thanksgiving is all about those little local gems. It's the boutiques run by your best friend's mom or the restaurants that only use local ingredients or the coffee shops that support and host local musicians.
Carly Nance, co-founder of The Citizenry, a home décor start-up in Dallas, is one of the creators of the first-year event Shop Small Holiday Market.
The Citizenry teamed up with Unbranded, a pop-up retail and event space, to create this event for local vendors and businesses -- mainly online only -- to showcase their work. "We just wanted to create a time for the Dallas creative community to come together and create an exceptional shopping experience for one day."
The event will be from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday at Unbranded, 2614 Elm St. in Deep Ellum, and so far 23 vendors have registered, among the Foot Cardigan, Easy Slider Truck and Photo-Wagon. The event is free for customers, as well as vendors.
Community Beer Co. will be there offering free beer, and Holy Kombucha will offer mimosas. We repeat: free beer and mimosas.
Nance, who moved to Dallas from New York a few years ago, says Dallas is getting better about shopping small, but there still are not enough instances when all of the Dallas neighborhoods -- Bishop Arts, Deep Ellum, Lower Greenville, etc. -- come together for an event.
Other than that, Nance says she believes people are looking to shop small, especially for holiday gifts.
"People are wanting to invest, more and more, in communities around them and within that community, especially the creative community, there's this hunger here in Dallas to ban together and create things that are bigger than ourselves and that's what this experiment can do," she says. "But this gives people a way to avoid the NorthParks, the Gallerias, the kind of dime a dozen shopping options that you can get anywhere in America and come get some truly unique, one-of-a-kind pieces that have a story behind them, have a meaning behind them, and are made by a person in their local community."
To RSVP for the event, click here.
