Tonight! The 3/50 Project: Building Business From the Ground Up

Join the Park Slope Fifth Avenue BID, the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, the Park Slope Chamber of Commerce and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz's Shop Brooklyn for The 3/50 Project: Building Business From the Ground Up. Come hear
nationally renowned speaker and retail consultant Cinda Baxter, founder of The 3/50 Project, as she talks about how Brooklyn's small business owners can thrive with a little ingenuity, some great marketing, and a real commitment to the community.

7:00 - 9:00 PM
St. Francis College
180 Remsen Street
Brooklyn NY 11201

Tickets are available at ibrooklyn.com

So, why is this event so important? Our local, small businesses are struggling every day in this difficult recession. If you can't make it to the speech, here are some reasons why it is so important to support locally owned small businesses (via Shop Brooklyn and newrules.org):

• Local Character and Prosperity In an increasingly homogenized world, communities that preserve their one-of-a-kind businesses and distinctive character have an economic advantage.


• Community Well-Being Locally owned businesses build strong communities by sustaining vibrant town centers, linking neighbors in a web of economic and social relationships, and contributing to local causes.


• Local Decision-Making Local ownership ensures that important decisions are made locally by people who live in the community and will feel the impacts of those decisions.


• Keeping Dollars in the Local Economy Compared to chain stores, locally owned businesses recycle a much larger share of their revenue back into the local economy, enriching the whole community.


• Job and Wages Locally owned businesses create more jobs locally and, in some sectors, provide better wages and benefits than chains do.


• Entrepreneurship Entrepreneurship fuels America's economic innovation and prosperity, and serves as a key means for families to move out of low-wage jobs and into the middle class.


• Public Benefits and Costs Local stores in town centers require comparatively little infrastructure and make more efficient use of public services relative to big box stores and strip shopping malls.


• Environmental Sustainability Local stores help to sustain vibrant, compact, walkable town centers-which in turn are essential to reducing sprawl, automobile use, habitat loss, and air and water pollution.


• Competition A marketplace of tens of thousands of small businesses is the best way to ensure innovation and low prices over the long-term.


• Product Diversity. A multitude of small businesses, each selecting products based not on a national sales plan but on their own interests and the needs of their local customers guarantees a much broader range of product choices.