City and Visit Pasadena Launch ‘We’re Open, Keep Us Open’ Holiday Campaign

Pasadena city officials and business leaders want people to remember three things this gift-giving season:

Shop early, shop often, and shop like your way of life depends on it — because it does.

The life we’ve enjoyed living in Pasadena is in jeopardy if city coffers can’t be filled with needed tax revenue generated by local holiday shopping and dining, they say, and so too is the ability to earn a living enjoyed by so many locals imperiled if Pasadenans don’t remember to spend their holiday shopping dollars here.

To help drive this important point home, the city of Pasadena and Visit Pasadena are launching a campaign to encourage people to shop small and dine locally this holiday season.

The holiday “Shop Pasadena” campaign aims to put a spotlight on the hundreds of independent businesses located in Pasadena and encourage the community to shop small, dine local and show some #locallove this season.

This year, more than ever thanks to the pandemic, Pasadena’s local and independent retailers are hurting and need the support of the community. Many brick and mortar retail shops and restaurants have been hit especially hard by COVID-19.

With many people going out of business or having to pivot to online orders and takeout during most of 2020, the holiday shopping season has become an even more critical time for these merchants to survive closures related to safer-at-home orders brought on by the coronavirus crisis.

“During the pandemic people have reduced their discretionary shopping. They’ve leaned more into online shopping, just because they’ve wanted to stay consistent with  distancing or, you know, being safe at home,” said Eric Duyshart, the city’s economic development manager. But ultimately, “we want to make sure that people pay more attention to our local storefront businesses because their sales have declined.”

Just as important as buying local goods, however, is supporting local people who also depend on those shopping dollars, Duyshart said.

“There are a number of people who work there and rely on those incomes,” Duyshart said. “So between the sales clerks and the business owners and the property owners, those are all just generally local people that rely on the commerce to continue.”

Duyshart also pointed out that it’s not online giants like Amazon or big box retailers like Walmart that fund nonprofits.

“The entrepreneurs that have businesses closeby are the ones that support our local nonprofits. They’re the ones that get involved in the community and volunteering and other things,” he said.

“That’s what kind of brings a whole different richness to any community, that they’re involved in everyday life. So that’s certainly a big disconnect that you would get with a Walmart or any online sales through Amazon,” he said.

The key message of this year’s Shop Pasadena campaign is “We’re Open, Keep Us Open.” The campaign graphic has the look and feel of a vintage shop sign and will be available for businesses to use on their own social media accounts, reproduced as window clings for storefront businesses, and in advertisements pursued by the city and Visit Pasadena.

Independent and small businesses are being asked to consider participating in the Shop Pasadena campaign. To do so, businesses are encouraged to:

• Download branded graphics for the Shop Pasadena campaign from www.visitpasadena.com/businessresources for use on their own social media feeds.

• Add their businesses contact information, specials and promotions to the Shop & Dine Pasadena directories located at www.visitpasadena.com/businessresources

• Encourage customers to tag #shoppasadena on their social feeds to spread awareness about the importance of shopping and dining local.

“We’ve traditionally done a shop local campaign, sometimes in collaboration with the city and sometimes not, about this time of year, and we’ve been doing that sort of thing all along,” said Pasadena Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Paul Little.

“We’re basically encouraging people through social media and all sorts of different ways to shop with locally owned stores,” Little said.

“This year is very different because of COVID, obviously, and this year is going to be very difficult because everything has been off so much, especially retail and hospitality, not to mention hotels. So this year they need us, they need support more than ever,” he said.

“I think the importance of people shopping locally is way more than just keeping your favorite store open,” Little said. “It’s keeping everything that that store supports, and everyone that works at that store, and everything that they support going.”