Small Business Saturday: Why It Matters to Us
Tomorrow is Small Business Saturday, and I've been thinking about what "small business" actually means in 2017. We sell online to customers around the world, but we're still a team of five people in a rented office space in East Vancouver. We're small. And we're proud of it.
The Vancouver Small Business Scene
Vancouver has a special relationship with small businesses. Maybe it's the city's independent streak, or the fact that big-box culture never fully took hold here the way it did in other North American cities. Walk down Main Street or Commercial Drive and you'll find coffee roasters, bookshops, bakeries, and design studios that have been around for decades — not because they scaled aggressively, but because they did something well and their community supported them.
We don't have a storefront. Our customers can't walk in and browse. But we carry that same Vancouver ethos: care about what you make, be honest about what you sell, and treat every customer like a neighbor.
Small Doesn't Mean Small Impact
Priya, who joined our team this fall to help with marketing and brand communications, pointed something out recently that stuck with me. She said: "We're small, but we've touched over ten thousand customers this year. That's ten thousand people whose mornings are a little better because of a baking mat, or whose trips are a little more secure because of an RFID sleeve. That's not small."
She's right. The impact isn't measured by headcount or office square footage. It's measured in the moments our products show up in people's lives.
Supporting Each Other
I still go to that East Vancouver small business meetup I mentioned in an earlier post. The candle maker from the original group now sells in thirty stores. The refurbished camera guy pivoted to drone photography and is thriving. The pet food couple got their product into a major retailer last month. We celebrated at the same coffee shop where we used to share our anxieties.
Small businesses don't really compete with each other. That's something I've learned. We compete with indifference — with the assumption that all products are the same and only price matters. When a customer chooses a small business, they're rejecting that assumption. They're saying, "I believe that who makes this and how they make it matters."
What You Can Do
If you're reading this, you probably already support small businesses — you're here, after all. But tomorrow, consider going one step further. Leave a review for a small business you love. Share their product with a friend. Send them an email telling them what you appreciate. You have no idea how much those small gestures mean to a team of five people checking their inbox over morning coffee.
Thank You, From Our Small Business to You
To everyone who has bought from Boxiki this year, left a review, sent a kind email, or told a friend about us: you are the reason small businesses survive. Not algorithms, not marketing budgets, not venture capital. You.
Happy Small Business Saturday. Go support someone who cares about what they do. And if you want, start with us — we've been told our RFID sleeves make excellent stocking stuffers.
— Stan and the Boxiki Team