Local initiative encourages residents to support Portland businesses

Nov 16 2020, 9:14 pm

It’s the middle of November, and we know what that means: time to start holiday shopping, Portland.

Whether it’s Christmas gifts for gramps you’re after or eight crazy nights of Hanukkah presents you have to saddle up for, major big box stores may have you covered. But this year, there’s a push for local shopping due to the pandemic.

A local initiative called the #PortlandPledge is trying to get Portlanders to cross their heart that they’ll do all their holiday shopping at local Portland businesses this season.

The initiative is run by PDXSOS, a program of Bricks Need Mortar, an advocacy group and coalition of independent retail businesses in the Portland area vouching for support for local businesses and providing guidance on how to do so.

According to the PDXSOS website, economists’ project that 2% of small businesses have already closed during the pandemic, and up to 70% won’t last all the way through.

“The only way our favorite Portland places will make it through this pandemic is if we band together as a city and support them. The small business community is the creative heart and the economic engine of Portland,” the website says.

You can browse through the e-commerce sites of local businesses participating in the initiative on PDXSOS’s website, everything from retail to coffee and bike shops.

Plus, the initiative encourages Portlanders to take the #PortlandPledge, and commit to doing all their holiday shopping at local businesses, in addition to advertising the initiative.

How to do that? Well, you can share your favorite local businesses with the hashtags #pdxsos, #pdxloveletter, and #portlandpledge to boast that you’ve taken the pledge with a poster or a banner for social media.

You can also do things like take online classes from local gyms, write reviews for local businesses, among other things, according to PDXSOS’s website. 

Particularly amid the four-week freeze coming to Portland this week, Mayor Ted Wheeler, who has been vocal about the need to support local during the pandemic, has also taken to social media to vouch for the initiative.

 

Ben BarakBen Barak

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