On Tuesday, December 6th, 2011 the amazing San Diego Cash Mob descended upon my little 600 square foot shop in the South Park neighborhood of San Diego, and showed me and our roster of 100+ local artists exactly what a huge positive impact a committed community of conscientious shoppers can have on our local economy.
As most shop keepers will confirm, the month before Christmas is pretty slow and January is even slower. So heading into the holiday season I was getting a little concerned that our December sales might not pull us through the slow times. When Lauren Way called me just a week earlier to ask me what I would think about her putting a few people together using social media to spend their shopping dollars here I of course said yes. Lauren made no promises, since this would only be the second cash mob in the nation, a movement started the previous month by her friend Andrew Samtoy, an attorney in Cleveland, OH, she said she couldn’t really predict how many supporters would show up, but her enthusiasm was contagious and I really liked everything she was proposing. To myself I thought, even if just Lauren showed up I would consider it a win, as Tuesday nights tend to be one of our slowest evenings of the week. Still, we were hopeful a few "mobbers" would show up.
And show up they did.
One person came in, and then the next, and then a crowd of about 30 shoppers quickly filled up the shop. It was a beautiful sight to see! The most surprising thing to me is that almost all the mobbers had never visited our South Park neighborhood or Make Good, most of them seemed to really like the store and several spent more than the suggested $20. It was great to see people so genuinely happy to be supporting a local store. I also know that many of them came back to do their holiday shopping here, and that was such a huge gift to all of us!
The other significant impact was all the media that showed up to cover the mobbing. Once those stories aired I saw a huge increase in our website activity and we gained many new signups to our Facebook page. Having some of our artists see their handmade items on television was a thrill for them (and for me), how cool is that?
One last personal note. I continue to be grateful to all of you that came out in support of our mobbing, you made a notable difference in December for us and all of our artists and our neighborhood. Huge thanks and appreciation for showing us the love with your shopping dollars in such a generous way, it’s truly humbling and amazing! Besides the wonderfully positive impact Cash Mob has had on Make Good and our artists, we deeply appreciate Cash Mobs' effort to raise awareness of small local businesses like ours, to the local neighborhood.
Sophia Hall, Owner; Make Good
ps. In case you want to see how the night went, here's a few TV media links with video and the last article has a link to the interview that was on KPBS Radio
NBC San Diego
Channel 6
KPBS
