This holiday season skip the urge to splurge at the big corporate company stores around town and keep your money in your community and with your local entrepreneurs of the Coachella Valley.

It should be practicaly a natural instinct for you to want to spend local alreadym but if you haven’t educated yourself on the subject, here is how our dollars are broken down and divided and recycled back into the economy.

There is a chain reaction in the economy that goes something like this: You spend $100 in a shop. The sales tax is roughly 9 percent, depending on where you make the purchase. That 9 percent gets divided among the parish, the school board, the sheriff’s department, the fire departments, the municipality, etc.

Nationally, statistics have shown that for every $100 spent in independently owned stores, $68 of it returns to the community through the employee payrolls, taxes, homes, cars and so forth. In addition, if you spend your money online, none of it recycles through the community.”

The rest of the money helps the merchant pay his bills for doing business. This trickles down to things like insurance, utilities, vendors, employee salaries, etc. Those employees then spend their salary money on other gifts or necessities like food, housing, clothes and maybe even things from where they work, keeping other merchants in business.

When you spend locally, the money recycles into your house, your neighbor’s house, the police and fire department, everyone gets to pay their bills and everyone wins.

Sometimes buying on-line or from outside the area simply can’t be helped. But whenever possible, supporting local merchants supports the local economy and in a roundabout way, supports ourselves.

So, with that being said…below are a list of retail shops that are owned and operated by people under 30 years old!!!

Each shop offers something different, so little something for everyone.  Make sure you at least go check it out…

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Epidemic Skate Shop