SALT LAKE CITY — As the holiday shopping season begins, Scott Pynes says he’s “nervous” in a way he’s felt only a few other times in 40 years of owning his own businesses.
The co-owner of Cactus & Tropicals says new tariffs have hit the plant stores “really hard” this year. Sales are relatively flat. Health care costs for employees continue to increase.
And amid inflation, Pynes thinks “we’re selling less stuff than we used to.” All the uncertainty reminds him of the challenges businesses faced during the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2008 financial crisis.
“And who’s to say whether we’ll remember this like those,” he said in a recent interview with FOX 13 News. “But certainly it has a little bit of a feeling of those times. I mean, are we just at the beginning of something or are we through the worst of it? We’re trying to figure that out.”
Now, Pynes is hoping holiday shoppers will come out for Small Business Saturday, an annual event that occurs the day after Black Friday and is meant to spur consumer spending at local retailers.
American Express launched Small Business Saturday in the midst of the recession in 2010, and the U.S. Small Business Administration joined as a cosponsor the next year. Since its inception, American Express estimates the annual shopping push has helped generate over $200 billion in reported sales.
“It’s usually a big day for us,” said Pynes, who noted that Cactus & Tropicals will be offering a variety of deals and specials at its three stores.
Derek Miller, the president and CEO of the Salt Lake Chamber, said his organization wants Utahns to shop small every day. But he thinks Small Business Saturday carries extra significance this year as many retailers struggle with financial uncertainty.
“Every business – regardless of the size, regardless of the geographic location – they really need two things: They need certainty and they need stability,” he said in an interview. “And unfortunately with the tariffs – with the inflation that we’re continuing to struggle under – both households and businesses, they have anything but stability and anything but certainty.”
Most of the plants at Cactus & Tropicals are grown in the United States and are not subject to tariffs. But Pynes says about a third of what its stores sell are non-plant products, such as pottery – almost all of which come from Asia and are subject to import fees.
“We would love to buy from a U.S. producer,” he said. “But they just don’t exist.”
Pynes said it can be difficult to determine how much Cactus & Tropicals has actually paid in tariffs, since some suppliers have simply increased their prices. But he said his stores have paid at least $50,000 in new import fees this year.
"When the prices of what we’re buying goes up by 20-30%, we can’t absorb it,” he said. “We have to pass some of those costs along. We’ve been very hesitant to so far because the economy is shaky. But we have no choice.”
As consumers decide where to put their dollars this holiday season, Pynes said he hopes they’ll recognize the benefits of supporting small businesses like his.
“There’s so many studies that show when people spend locally, that money stays in the community,” he said. “But when you go to a big box store or national chains, the money tends to leave the state.”
Miller calls small businesses – which make up more than 99% of all businesses in Utah – the “heartbeat of our economy.” These small businesses also employ about half of all Utahns, he notes.
“So when people are spending money locally, what they’re doing is not only supporting that business,” he said, “but what they’re really doing is helping to create jobs right in their own community.”
Small Business Saturday, he added, provides an opportunity for people to step outside of their typical shopping patterns in a way that can have broad benefits.
“I’m confident that if they do that, they’ll be pleasantly surprised and they’ll find a treasure in their community that they hadn’t thought of before or maybe they’ve forgotten,” Miller said. “It will be a joy to them and whatever they end up buying there — especially if it’s a gift for someone else — it will be a joy for that person, too.”
