Downtown businesses will be taking a page out of their American colleagues' play book when they host a "Small Business Saturday" this weekend.
It will follow Downtown Prince George's third annual Plaid Friday event and comes at a time when American Thanksgiving has come to mark the start of the holiday shopping season on both sides of the border.
"We just decided to piggyback on that because Saturday is quite a common shopping day, even for our downtown, and we thought that we'd definitely have some fun with that," said DPG executive director Colleen Van Mook.
According to Wikipedia, Small Business Saturday was first observed during the 2010 American Thanksgiving and was created as a counterpart to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which are centred on big box retail and e-commerce stores respectively.
"By contrast, Small Business Saturday encourages holiday shoppers to patronize small, local brick and mortar businesses," the web-based encyclopedia says.
Credit card company American Express provided the impetus in 2010 when it backed a nationwide advertising campaign and bought advertising inventory on Facebook, which it in turn gave to its small merchant account holders, and also gave rebates to new customers to promote the event.
In Prince George, the event will feature a scavenger hunt with a $500 shopping spree at stake. Contestants must first solve a series of clues DPG will provide to find out which five businesses to visit. From there, they must find the Love Downtown PG phrases at each store and then bring their completed forms to Serengeti Northern B.C. at 550 George St. by 4 p.m.
As for Plaid Friday, named in the spirit of "creating a strong fabric that celebrates the diversity and creativity of independent businesses," there will be giveaways to shoppers who bring to Hubspace their receipts from purchases made at any of 30 participating businesses.
Hubspace will also be where crafts and photos with Santa will be found for the kids while the Cantata singers will performing festive carols as they stroll the downtown streets.
The event runs 4-8 p.m.
