American Express OPEN Sponsors The 3/50 Project
GDA Staff -- Gifts and Dec, 11/8/2010 8:01:00 AM
Minneapolis, MN - The 3/50 Project, the viral grassroots "support your local small businesses" movement born out of a simple blog post by retail consultant Cinda Baxter, has earned the support of American Express OPEN as its premiere sponsor. American Express OPEN's financial support provides The 3/50 Project with working capital and enhanced visibility, allowing it to expand its outreach to small brick-and-mortar retail businesses and help to spread The 3/50 
Cinda Baxter
Project's message even further.
Explains The 3/50 Project's Cinda Baxter, "As viral campaigns go, most die shortly after a supernova start, often due to a lack of long term vision and proper funding. I had the vision, but no funding -- not terribly different from how a lot of small businesses begin. I'm grateful for what [American Express OPEN brings] to the table and excited to see what mountains we can move together." According to Baxter, AmEx's support will allow the Project to make changes on the back office side to help the Project run more smoothly.
In addition to its sponsorship of The 3/50 Project, American Express OPEN has tapped Baxter as the national spokesperson for "Small Business Saturday," an initiative that stakes a claim on the Saturday between Black Friday and Cyber Monday for independent, locally owned brick-and-mortar merchants.
According to Baxter, "Thanksgiving weekend used to be the one that financially solidified independent merchants, but as of late, has become one of their most difficult to survive."
This is a great project. Amex is one of the most supportive small business companies in the US. It is unbelievably short sighted for businesses to not take Amex. The average spend with Amex is higher, the customers more loyal and the company very supportive. The fees? Go and check out your Delta World rewards card or any number of other "visa/mastercards" It's not even close to 1.65, try more like 2.50-3.75. Most merchants don't read their statements thoroughly enough to understand how expensive mastercard and visa can be.
retailprophet - 2010-11-11 14:05:40 ESTAs a small independent retailer I really appreciate the effort that our Chamber of Commerce and City Main Street Program are doing to get the message of the 3/50 program out. Toccoa, GA is a great town to live in, but we are so close to Atlanta that often our customers make a shopping day and travel to the big city. Many of our local businesses have fallen short of profitability due to the movement into our community of stores like Wal-mart and Home Depot. We operate both a gift store and a high end portrait studio. My husband and I are 3rd generation owners and are proud that our doors are still open. We appreciate the many local friends that choose to shop with us. We know that in many way we can't compete with the big box stores. However, we keep working to make their shopping experience in our store awesome. Our goal is to treat each customer fairly and to give them first rate customer service.
Patti Troup Joiner - 2010-11-10 18:17:31 ESTGreat to hear that American Express is backing this worthy project! AmEx should now further it's commitment to independent retailers by working directly with us to lower the rates it charges to accept the card in our stores and shorten the time it takes to settle their payments into our bank accounts.
Mark Hearne - 2010-11-10 11:26:04 ESTCongratulations to Cinda and the 3/50 Project! I'd like to see some mountains moved as well.
Lori Webster - 2010-11-10 11:08:08 EST
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