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Firstly, great site. Supporting local business makes an important difference in communities and anything to that end gets my full support.
I had a some thoughts about how this might be extended a bit.
One idea, which already happens to some extent, is to showcase more local products. As much as supporting local businesses has positive implications for the community and economy, it is also important to support local producers. This is a way to capture more of the local and regional spending needed to create investment in our communities and spur new creative job growth. If we keep buying the designer products from outside the region we are sending our money away. Obviously, this will happen to some extent, but the more local goods we can grow and support the better. In addition, with all the talk of "greeness," local production and local businesses purchasing local goods and services has positive environmental implications. While many of the local businesses you highlight carry and use locally produced goods it would be interesting to see that in more detail.
Another idea that could be related to the first is to have more of a physical presence. Local First has a similar objective, with presumably a lot more resources, but nonetheless, they place a logo identifying participating businesses on-site. This is just one way of building a network of local businesses and creating awareness of the benefits of supporting that network. It is not the best and there are many over examples across the nation.
I think that some sort of sort of cool local ephemera, like stickers, shopping bags, coffee cup sleeves, posters.. could be great to create more awareness. I am sure that there are some willing local artist or designer who would love to help on this.
Thanks for all the hard work.
