By Jim Mikula, President/CEO
The October festivals are behind us and the Fredericksburg holiday season has now kicked off with last night’s FlavoryTX Holiday Prelude held at Swallows Eve. It is always a fun event pairing up our renowned wineries with very talented local chefs working with students from Fredericksburg High School Culinary Program.
Over the past year, Chamber members have raised concerns about inflation and maintaining the level of sales they need to keep their business healthy. The latest local tax report shows that sales tax revenues increased 14.8% 2024 over 2021 (excluding the April bump due to solar eclipse business). During the same time period inflation was 14.9%. That means local sales didn’t enjoy meaningful growth, we just barely kept ahead of inflation.
For this holiday season, I urge us all to do our Christmas shopping here in Fredericksburg and Gillespie County. Our retailers on/off Main Street, restaurants, caterers, and wineries in city/county are all prepared for the holiday season. Inventories are ready, decorations are going up, businesses are hiring more staff and some adding hours of operation, and all are focused on what they can do to make this holiday season successful. December is traditionally the number 1 month for sales tax collections, and our neighbors who own businesses need our help to finish 2024 strong after a tough year economically.
If we all shop and dine at our local establishments, we can make up for any potential drop off in visitors to our community. I wonder what would happen if we all shopped locally vs online or going outside our county to shop.
There are approximately 14,500 households in Gillespie County and 5,050 in the city limits. If all 14,500 households purchased an average of $100 of additional discretionary goods from local businesses during the holiday season, we would add $1,450,000 to our economy in one month. Taking this one step further, if all households spent an average of $1,000 on discretionary goods locally in one year that would equal one full point of GDP for our county.
The Chamber has put together a Main Street Merchants committee and is in the early stages of an Arts committee. These committees will collaborate on how to increase sales and profits. I fully expect that these committees will develop programs to encourage more local purchases vs shopping on Amazon (as an example) for products that are available here in Gillespie County. Please remember that over 99% of our businesses are small or micro businesses. Collectively these businesses provide a significant majority of employment and services. We often hear the term major employer like our hospital or a large retail operation like Wal-Mart. Both are important to our community and economy for sure. Yet, in my opinion the small/micro businesses in our community is our major employer.
Starting this holiday season, our household will spend more of our discretionary income with our major employer—the small/micro businesses of Gillespie County. Please join us!
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