Shop local Iowa movement offers retailers options

Movement is picking up momentum

Open through we've heard so much about how important it is to support businesses in our communities by shopping local.

Now the state of iowa is making it even easier to support our proprietor friends and neighbors.

Kimt news three's nick kruszalnicki is live in mason city to show us how it's done.

Nick?

George and katie ?

"* it's calld shop iowa ?

"* take a look at te website.

These are all small businesses across the state who are selling their products online.

Shopping local is as easy at one click.

"people want that convienience, they want to be able to shop in places that they just can't drive through."

Brick and mortar businesses can sign up to sell their goods on shop iowa dot com.

Brook boehmler (bem?

"* le) with the north iowa area small business center says selling online can help a business get through the tough times.

"any retailer that does not have an online presence because of what happened during march and april... you know, winter is coming and you know what, we have blizzards."

Shop iowa is funded through the iowa economic development authority.

The organization makes the process easy for vendors to get their products online.

"creating your own website is really expensive and some of these other retail marketplaces also take a lot of money from sales."

They can even take the guesswork out of calculating sales tax across city, county or state lines.

Best of all ?

"* your business gets to keep all the profits.

"at this point, shop iowa doesn't take a percentage of the cut or anything like that.

You can only help yourself and so i think it's so important shop iowa began in june.

Right now it is free to sell on there until june of next year.

Live in mason city, nick kruszalnicki, kimt news 3.

Thanks nick.

The shop iowa team will be in north iowa on november 16th and 17th to help small businesses get their products on the website.

For more details, visit our website