The UK’s largest local online shopping platform – ShopLocalOnline.org – has launched. The site is dedicated to helping small high street retailers, to include gift shops, fight back against the global retail giants, providing customers with more ethical and environmentally friendly choices.
The new platform has been set up by ShopAppy founder and Government High Streets Task Force expert Dr Jackie Mulligan.
“This Christmas, it’s more important than ever that Brits avoid being sucked into the Black Friday hype and shop local or they are putting the future of the UK high street at risk,” says Jackie.
“Every time someone purchases anything through ShopLocalOnline.org they are supporting a small independent retailer and a local community, rather than blasting another billionaire into space. Shopping locally and nationally also significantly reduces your carbon footprint compared to shopping with the online giants, where products are often imported from the other side of the world. So wherever possible, we’re urging people to forget Black Friday and make this one a Green Friday.
Continues Jackie: “And while October’s retail sales data showed footfall is slowly starting to return to the high street, based on our daily conversations with small retailers in over 100 UK towns and cities, it’s still brutal out there. After pandemic restrictions made last Christmas a bleak one for bricks and mortar stores, the next four to five weeks will be make or break time for many smaller retailers, with around one in ten saying to us they may not survive if festive sales are weak.”
ShopLocalOnline enables people to buy products online from over 4,000 small independent retailers in more than 100 towns and cities around the UK.
The platform is encouraging all local retailers to sign up for free, with no set-up fees or commission, launching at a time when more customers than ever are seeking alternatives to online giants and the often fake, over-hyped deals of Black Friday.
Local high street retailers can sign up at the ‘everything locally, nationally’ site’ at: shopappy.com/vendor
