Photo by Bob Schneider

By Hayley Ferguson

Time for Giving

Local businesses thankful for support through holiday season

Dec 23, 2019 | 5:32 PM

Medicine Hat, AB – As people run to the stores one final time before Christmas, the push for supporting local business continues.

Cyclepath owner, Greg Watson says that customers get a better shopping experience that can’t be replicated in the big box stores or online.

“Our customers, they really want the customer service and they want the expertise behind their purchase. Especially with a lot of the modern bicycles. It’s not your department store bicycle that you’re buying,” he smiled. “Plus Santa does shop here. So we do a lot of pickups, Christmas Eve day for Santa to load up his sleigh and stuff as well so that the kids can get their bikes on Christmas morning,”

Watson added that not only does locally shopping make for a better experience, but it can make a major difference for everybody in these tough economic times.

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“People have to understand that when they shop online, the money is leaving your area. So when you’re affected by a cutback you have to think about your own backyard as to why those cutbacks are occurring,” he said.

The president of Uniquely Different Decor in Redcliff, Darrell Burton, agreed.

“If you spend the money outside the town, the jobs also leave outside the town. So the more you spend locally, the more we keep our jobs, and everybody prospers then,” he said.

While he said business has been quieter than years pasts, he says that people have been showing up the best they can.

As for downtown businesses, Jeremy Silver with the City Centre Development Agency says that they are also seeing people making a point to come and support them.

“Everybody is struggling month to month. But they’re no different than the rest of the province. But Christmas has been really good for us downtown. And we’re thankful for that because it will buy us extra time and hopefully things improve,” he continued. “January, February are notoriously painful for any retail business because people are getting their credit card bills. So the better the Christmas, the buffer they have to survive the two months where nobody is shopping.”

Silver says that this years’ Midnight Madness was one of the largest ever, with many stores seeing three times the sales on that single day then they could see for the whole season.