Tipperary shoppers urged to shop local during Christmas period

ISME is asking consumers in Tipperary to consider shopping local this year to support their own communities and help maintain a vibrant buzz along main streets.

With only a few weekends of shopping to go, ISME is reminding consumers that every €1 spent locally on their Christmas shop could generate up to €4 in their community.

Shopping locally for goods and services returns multiples of the customers spend back to the community and helps local businesses maintain jobs in Irish towns and villages.

ISME is urging customers to ensure that they devote a proportion of their Christmas shopping to local bricks-and-mortar or ‘Irish’ online stores, leaving only those hard-to-find gifts that can't be sourced elsewhere to be purchased from larger multinational companies.

Neil McDonnell, Chief Executive at ISME, said: “We are hoping that consumers in Tipperary will bring some Christmas cheer to Irish retailers this year and decide to shop locally. By consciously choosing to buy locally, even a portion of our purchases can have a meaningful impact, as each euro spent locally can generate two, three, or even four times its value in community wealth. This Christmas, we must take the opportunity to support local retailers and hospitality providers. Making these choices can even lead to time, money, and effort being saved and can even reduce our environmental footprint by keeping some of our festive spending close to home”

To help people make local choices this Christmas, ISME has created two online portals – one for consumers and one for businesses. Consumers can browse a variety of categories such as activities and entertainment, fashion, food and drink, retail, and Irish breaks which offers gift ideas for Christmas and showcases local businesses.

For businesses, they can access a directory of B2B products and services such as corporate gifts, legal and financial services, IT and marketing, transport, training and more.