Small Business Saturday takes over Downtown Bloomington

Posted on December 2, 2024

*You can collect stamps on your passport until Dec. 6. That’s also the night of Bloomington’s tree-lighting event. (Facebook/Downtown Bloomington IL)*

BLOOMINGTON – The city of Bloomington encouraged people to shop local for Small Business Saturday.

It’s a passport campaign called “Shop… Stamp… Share”.

Shoppers get a stamp on their souvenir passports for every purchase made at each business. Once the passport is full of stamps, you can turn it in for a chance to win prizes from downtown Bloomington businesses.

Small Business Saturday is meant to boost traffic to small businesses on the first Saturday after Thanksgiving.

One small business owner says small business Saturday always brings new faces into his art gallery.

” I think it was a way to tack on to that holiday weekend. You had the Black Friday blitz of, you know, hitting a lot of the big box stores and I think people wanted to create something to remind everybody about the mom-and-pop, about your neighbor’s space, about the things that are unique to the community here,” said Santino Lamancusa, Owner of the Hangar Art Company.

You can collect stamps on your passport until Dec. 6. That’s also the night of Bloomington’s tree-lighting event.

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