Small Business Saturday is shown using the text. Shop local. Small business concept.
getty
Small Business Saturday—the annual shopping holiday held over the Thanksgiving weekend, launched by American Express in 2010—is a day devoted to American small businesses. In an effort to “Make Small Businesses Great Again,” the Trump administration’s Kelly Loeffler, the SBA Administrator, took to FoxBusiness’ Kudlow show to prime the pump and get Americans to come out and support small businesses. The SBA has been an American Express co-sponsor of Small Business Saturday since 2011.
“With the economy rebounding from forty-year high inflation, there’s never been a better time to shop small in support of local businesses,” she said, adding, “This Christmas season, the SBA asks every American to join us in standing with Main Street to support the small businesses that make our nation strong.”
However, many Americans didn’t get the memo. American Express’s Consumer Insights survey reported an estimated $18 billion was spent shopping at retailers and restaurants this Small Business Saturday. That’s nearly a 20% drop from the estimated $22 billion spent last year, according to consumer surveys of their reported spending.
While the National Retail Federation reported that Saturday’s 62.7 million turn out to shop in-store was just a shade above that from last year, the big growth was in online shopping. Some 63 million consumers shopped online this Small Business Saturday, compared to 54 million last year, a 16% increase and we can assume much of the day’s online shopping was done with the majors, not small businesses.
RetailNext tells a different story. It reported Saturday’s retail foot traffic was off by nearly 9% nationwide, with the monster Friday night snowstorm in the Midwest causing local traffic to tank by 42%. Nonetheless, Small Business Saturday foot traffic was down an average of 4% in the Northeast, South and West, just slightly above the 3.6% drop on Black Friday.
Commenting on the decline seen over these two days, Joe Shasteen, RetailNext’s head of advanced analytics, said in a statement, “Shoppers showed they’re done with the impulse-driven, one-day frenzy.
Budgets Before Community
While shoppers come out on Black Friday to grab the biggest deals at national retailers, Small Business Saturday is devoted to building up and connecting with local communities.
The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index dropped seven points in November, from 95.5 in October to 88.7 right before Thanksgiving. The November University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index took a similar tumble, hovering just one point above its record low in June 2022.
“Consumers remain frustrated about the persistence of high prices and weakening incomes,” University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers director, Joanne Hsu, said in a statement.
While consumers expect inflation to ease modestly in the coming months, they still feel weighed down by the persistently high prices they confront every day. As a result, bargain shopping behavior, once practiced by a discreet niche segment of consumers, has now gone mainstream—even among high earners.
For example, Dollar General reported it is attracting more high-income shoppers this year than any time since the pandemic. At Walmart, CEO Doug McMillon said that 75% of Walmart’s market share gains in the U.S. during the third quarter were thanks to households earning over $100,000. And Costco reported that consumers continue to trade down from national brands to its private-label Kirkland products. Sales of Kirkland Signature outpaced the company’s 8% growth in fiscal 2025.
Sadly, that leaves small retail businesses out in the cold, since they can’t compete on price or against the buying power of the majors. While SBA’s Loeffler stresses that shopping small means consumers are “investing in the workers and job creators who power our own communities,” that investment may be a luxury many shoppers cannot afford in the current economic climate.
Small Businesses On The Ropes
Holiday sales can make or break small businesses, driving nearly half of their annual revenues, according to the Intuit QuickBooks holiday shopping survey conducted among 1,000 small businesses in September. Even more troubling, 91% of small businesses said the holidays are critical to their businesses’ survival, up sharply from 61% last year. Small Business Saturday’s slow start could dash their hopes not just for the holiday season, but the whole year.
In a side-by-side survey among 6,000 consumers, Intuit found strong support to shop small this year—90% said supporting small businesses was extremely or somewhat important. Yet 42% said that higher prices may keep them from acting on their good intentions.
That’s turned the tables in the competitive environment for small businesses. Two-thirds of small businesses now see big-box retailers as major competition, up from 35% last year. More alarming, last year 62% of small businesses said competition from big retailers was not a concern during the holiday season, compared to 33% this year.
Into The Breach
Clearly, one day—Small Business Saturday—isn’t going to make or break small businesses, but a weak holiday season might. American Express understands this and over the years, it has been evolving its Small Business Saturday program to help small businesses grow regardless of how the economic winds blow.
What started as a marketing-focused initiative to drive one day’s sales back in 2010, evolved into a full-year “Shop Small” effort in 2013. And after the pandemic hit, it expanded its support to include a small business grants program. It also added a hurricane recovery grant program last year to support small businesses impacted by Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
“The initial Small Business Saturday program was to drive foot traffic and more commerce to small business,” shared American Express chief corporate affairs officer Jennifer Skyler. “Since then, it’s become a global movement of year around support for small business. The grants are another part of that support.”
American Express has committed to delivering $100 million in grants to small businesses from 2023 through 2028, and by the end of last year, it had donated nearly $40 million to some 2,500 small businesses.
This year, American Express has set aside $5 million in grants to provide 250 recipients—approximately 5 per state—a $20,000 windfall to qualifying independently-owned small businesses with fewer than 20 employees and at least one physical location in the U.S. It partners with Main Street America to select recipients from applications received through January 16.
In addition, recipients’ grants could increase, as $1 from Small Business Saturday purchases made with an American Express card is also donated to the program. Last year, Small Business Saturday’s donations matched the company’s $5 million, yielding $10 million in total grants.
Small Businesses Need The Lift
Small businesses are not just vital to local communities. The national economy depends on them as well. The SBA reports that small businesses employ half of the private sector workforce and generate nearly half of the nation’s GDP.
During administrator Loeffler’s swearing-in ceremony in February, she described the nation’s 34 million small businesses as the “backbone of our nation’s economy.”
Yet the administration’s tariff policies are generally felt to have hurt more than helped small businesses compete against the industry giants.
Here’s hoping that small businesses get a quick rebound from a relatively weak Small Business Saturday showing and don’t come out of the holiday season with the business equivalent of osteoporosis.
