Supporting small, local businesses

EAST AURORA, N.Y. (WIVB) - Forget Black Friday and Cyber Monday, many around Western New York geared up for Small Business Saturday.

This is the third official year this grassroots movement is taking place. The idea is to try and support locally owned vendors.

One place that was very busy Saturday morning was Main Street in East Aurora. Especially Vidler's, where they say they've noticed the uptick since word has spread about the shopping holiday.

Don Vidler, the owner of the well known small business says, "I think because they realize we're not the big box store with the massive volume of chains and we know we can't compete with that. But to support us locally, it helps terrifically. It all kind of goes around. We're buying from the local suppliers and vendors here and they come and shop in the store and the community really supports us."

Mr Vidler says the only reason the town has been able to thrive is because they've been able to keep out the big box stores.

"You hear the big box stores can come and they can go and they're great when they're here and they can really hurt you when you leave, they can really bankrupt a community in some cases," says Vidler.

Something else that's gaining popularity is Made in America, where every product in the store is made and manufactured in our own country. Not only that, this store in Elma is filled nearly a third by product from Western New York.

Head buyer, Robert Whalen says, "People take a lot of pride in buying American made. It started out as kind of like a spark when we first opened but now it's become more of a movement on a national basis too."

American Express helped get the Small Business Saturday movement going. They estimate there are 27-million small and independent businesses from coast to coast,  and since the holiday's inception in 2010, more than 100 million people have shopped small.