Support local small business this Independence Day

With the 2024 Paris Olympics in full swing, our excitement and support for the Indian team is palpable with social media and news articles flooding our feeds with updates. Prestigious global events such as these ignite our patriotic spirit, urging us to take pride in our country while making us put our heads together to consider how we can contribute to its progress. 

As we look forward to celebrating India’s 77th Independence Day, it presents itself as a moment to reflect on our journey and how far we’ve come. This year, we want to speak about this supremely close to our hearts. Being a small business ourselves, this year, we wish for the sense of pride and reflection to extend to our support for small businesses. 

At Bare Necessities, we are deeply and closely associated with a network of fellow small business entrepreneurs. We understand the challenges that small businesses undergo and recognise the importance of supporting them. 

Small businesses are often overshadowed by larger conglomerates, considered the underdogs in comparison. Despite the long passage of four years since the Covid-19 pandemic, its impact continues to affect businesses, especially small ones. 

Through this blogpost, we will take you through understanding why supporting local businesses is advantageous to you as a consumer, while fuelling a larger economy. 

1. Strengthening the local community through purchasing decisions: 

By choosing to shop locally, you are essentially cycling money back within the community supporting the local economy. With the development and ubiquitousness of large chain stores, both online and offline, we’re totally spoilt for choices and offers. A decade or two ago, shopping from the local kirana store was considered the norm. It not only supported local shopkeepers, but also fostered personal connections, which are hard to find in today’s increased digital world. 

2. Reduce Carbon Footprint: 

Local business businesses by virtue of their ethos and constraints, tend to source locally, thereby reducing transportation needs and cutting down on pollution. At Bare Necessities, a bulk of our vendors and suppliers are located at a distance of less than 80 kms from our location, allowing us to significantly lower our carbon footprint. 

3. Job Creation: 

Small businesses drive economic growth by creating jobs for individuals, who may not necessarily qualify for positions in larger companies. 

At Bare Necessities, for instance, our commitment to ethical sourcing and women’s employment is reflected in our supplier partnerships with partners such as Kerehaklu and Mason & Co. 

• PeopleKraft: Creates upcycled pouches made from textile waste, employing and training underserved women. 

• Kerehaklu: A fifth generation coffee producer in Chikmagalur, has been cultivating specialty coffee, avocados and pepper since 1953 - while coexisting with local biodiversity.

• Mason & Co.: India’s first organic, single-origin chocolate business in Auroville, employs an all-women team and works directly with farmers for high quality organic cacao. 

We collaborated with Mason & Co. to develop products like Dessert Dry Shampoo and Mason & Co. x Bare Cacao Butter Lip Balm. 

Additionally, small businesses  support local vendors and suppliers, thereby creating indirect livelihoods too. For instance, we at Bare Necessities support local traders like Mr. Mohammed Masood, who hand stitches our cloth pouches. In doing so, we foster strong relationships based on best practices and sustainability. 

At Bare Necessities, we alone have played a part in creating a total of 187 livelihoods by virtue of our operations.

4. Giving back to the local community: 

Small businesses give back to the community through their hiring practices, supplier policies and the local engagement.

Small businesses benefit heavily from the support of a strong community and therefore consciously choose to be more engaged and active in their communities themselves. 

At Bare Necessities, we leverage our platform to create positive impact. We offer our customers a way to offset their shipping footprint. Through partnerships with Maruvan and Hasiru Dala, we encourage our customers to support these organisations and their impactful initiatives when they are purchasing Bare Necessities products from our website. 

• Maruvan: We work closely with Maruvan, who restore native forests in the Marwar region through seed banks, nurseries, and Miyawaki method forest patches. The funds collected through donations from our customers, goes towards maintaining the grove and making it a biodiverse green haven or mini forest. To know about our partnership with Maruvan, check out this blogpost here. 

• Hasiru Dala: At Bare Necessities, we are committed to creating stable, green jobs for women, from underserved communities. Our women-run manufacturing team handcrafts all our personal care products. We focus on employment, upskilling and financial inclusion. A big win for us recently was hiring our first ever waste warrior into our team, Chitra, who joined through Hasiru Dala. While Chitra’s stay with us was short-lived, it provided us with invaluable lessons that have filled us up with a renewed sense of inspiration to pursue it earnestly. Going forward, our aim is to employ more waste warriors and their families. Hasiru Dala organises career fares and Bare Necessities has been an active participant. In these sessions, we have pitched ourselves as potential employers for the waste warrior community. 

As a team, we have taken part in several volunteering events. We worked on clean up drives and tree plantation drives. Not only do these activities foster deep compassion to our society, but they also create a sense of community amongst us all. 

Additionally, we hosted several free workshops such as Friday For Future, at schools and colleges in Bangalore, Daily Dump, a Bangalore-based brand that helps manage waste. We also hosted several virtual workshops around sustainability over the course of the pandemic. 

5. Foster Innovation & Growth: 

Small businesses stand out for their innovative solutions to problems of today. They truly conjure up some innovative solutions to relevant problems plaguing the world and strive to create new products and services tailored to specific consumer needs. 

By supporting local businesses, you as a consumer help drive innovation and growth. 

This Independence Day, we urge you to support small businesses, which play a crucial role in our communities and economy.

Let’s continue to support and celebrate the spirit of small businesses, who are out there to make a difference in the world!