Shop Local: Holidays Gift Guide
The holiday season is an important one for small businesses every year, and it figures to take on heightened importance in 2021.
COVID-19 continues to impact small businesses between workforce shortages and giving their all to make the best of a tough situation.
As small businesses face difficult challenges, it’s no surprise many consumers want to support locally owned small businesses this holiday season.
Small businesses are the backbone of many communities, and the holiday season provides a great opportunity to support such firms as they look to recover from a difficult year.
Shop Local: Three upcycled, reclaimed unique Maine gifts
For the holidays, we’re shining the spotlight on Maine craftspeople. Shop locally and support innovators and entrepreneurs who keep the creative economy alive in this state. Each week, until the end of December, we will bring you this series until you can’t take it anymore. Ready. Set. Go.
Reclaimed Maine Buoys
Portland, Maine
… Read moreShop Local: Three quintessential Maine gifts
For the holidays, we’re shining the spotlight on Maine craftspeople. Shop locally and support innovators and entrepreneurs who keep the creative economy alive in this state. Each week, until the end of December, we will bring you this series until you can’t take it anymore. Ready. Set. Go.
Beach Star Ornaments
Appleton, Maine
… Read moreA farmer just took over a mini golf course and the result is a wild new business
ROCKPORT—Farmer Mary Nelson née Clayton and her husband, Tom, recently bought the nearly 40-year-old Cardinal Cove Mini Golf Center and an adjacent house with big plans for its future.
The first floor of the house, on Commercial Street in Rockport, which used to be an arcade, has turned into a small retail space for Nelson’s natural-made products called Bee Wild Farmacy. She just held her grand opening Sunday, November 21.
Having grown up in Rockland, Nelson moved to central… Read more
Knitted hats with a naughty message
ROCKPORT—Sometimes you just want to say things you can’t out loud. Liz Polkinghorn, a knitter, understands that need, and designs the type of hat that ”allows you to put all the things you'd like to say out loud, but sometimes just can’t, onto your hat instead.”
Her hand-knitted hats have become a home business called Bespolk Hats. It can sometimes take a whole day to custom create with 100 percent wool and pom poms of real fur, faux fur or cotton. And her biggest seller is a word… Read more
Environmentally conscious Symmetree Base Camp sets up shop in Camden
CAMDEN—The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. In this case, the tree is Cynthia Trone, a long-time resident of Camden and the apple is her son, Jackson Berger, whose Oregon-based outdoor clothing store, Symmetree, has now branched out to become Trone’s retail shop on Bay View Street that goes by the name Symmetree Base Camp.
Trone, who used to manage the former location of The Grasshopper Shop when it was on Bay View Street in the 1980s, has come full circle, back to her retail… Read more
Nature-inspired arts and decor store opens in Liberty
LIBERTY—The quiet little inland town of Liberty certainly has it going on these days. Good Natured, a home goods and artisan shop with nature-inspired crafts and decor held its Grand Opening on July 31.
Owner Kate Meadows, a maker and artist herself, had been wanting to open her own shop for two years after moving to Liberty with her husband from Pennsylvania.
The shop is a rustic combination of repurposed vintage items and nature-made art. Inside, one can find old bottles,… Read more
Midcoast Maine gains a new small book publisher and two literary magazines
NORTHPORT—A new small press has launched in Maine called Toad Hall Editions and its purpose is to give a platform to writers who don’t get noticed in the more traditional publishing arenas.
Founded by Amy Tingle, Liz Kalloch and Maya Stein, the trio all have skills in the publishing and design industries. The idea for the small press came out of years of collaboration on their own various projects. Their collective work on Stein’s latest book, The Poser: 38 Portraits Reimagined… Read more
Ollie & David’s, a vintage store with factory-farm appeal, opens in Rockland
ROCKLAND — A spate of new businesses are opening up all around the Midcoast this spring, following a tumultuous year for shops and stores struggling during the pandemic. One of the newest is a curated vintage shop owned by David Robichaud called Ollie and David’s—with Ollie as a tribute to his dog, an English Springer Spaniel.
It is located on the first floor of the Thorndike building at 385 Main Street, once the great Thorndike Hotel. This overlooked building is often thought to… Read more
Tenants Harbor lobstering entrepreneur ropes in home decor market with handcrafted doormats
TENANTS HARBOR—Logan and Hannah Rackliff, co-owners of The Rope Co., have fostered a unique home decor business around an unlikely source—float rope, used by lobstermen to attach to lobster traps to the buoy and from trap to trap.
Logan, a fifth generation lobsterman, comes by the profession naturally, both as a working lobsterman and as the descendant of entrepreneurs who started rope companies in Maine.
His grandfather started Crowe Rope which… Read more
Belfast’s The Green Store tackles plastic waste with dispense-your-own soap
BELFAST—Think you’re being a good consumer by dropping your plastic recycling off at a Transfer Station each week? Well, don’t wipe your hands and be on your merry way, yet.
A Pew Charitable Trust … Read more
Resources
PenBayPilot.com’s business directory
PenBayPilot.com’s Midcoast Entrepreneurs hub
Eco-friendly gift options
The saying “the more the merrier” certainly applies during the holiday season. But during a season of big gifts, extra food and travel, “more” can exact a heavy toll on the environment.
According to Stanford University, Americans generate 25 percent more trash between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve than during the rest of the year. But there are various eco-friendly gifts that can make great presents and benefit the environment at the same time.
Purchase experiential gifts
When making holiday shopping lists, think of gifts that offer experiences rather than material goods.
Gifts that involve experiences, such as going to a sporting event or attending a play or musical, decrease reliance on wrapping paper. Such gifts also reduce clutter in the recipient’s house and conserve the resources otherwise used to manufacture alternative items that would have been purchased.
Experiential gifts that also tap into environmental pursuits, such as touring with an animal rescue group, or accommodations at a carbon-neutral hotel can be an added bonus.
Opt for locally made gifts Select gifts made by local artisans or companies that operate domestically. This cuts down on the carbon emissions from having to ship products from long distances or even overseas.
Get crafty
Gifts from the kitchen or ones made by the giver can be crafted from sustainable materials. They also show how you care by taking the time to customize a gift for the recipient.
Avoid gag or useless gifts
Select gifts only with utility in mind.
Skip purchases that are made only to beef-up the look of presents under the tree or to make it appear that gifting was more generous.
Items that a person cannot or will not use will ultimately be relegated to the trash, which is wasteful.
Wrap in reusable materials Fancy wrapping paper certainly looks nice, but choose other materials that can be reused.
Look for decorative tins, boxes, fancy gift bags, and other items that can be reused for years to come.