Supporting New Hampshire’s Small Businesses
Visiting Melissa— the owner and curator of The Studio, a gift shop in downtown Laconia. She knows the stories of all the makers of the clothing and goods she sells, and every thing is chosen with the intent to bring joy.
Our district is full of amazing small business owners. As I’ve traveled around the district, they tell me about how they built their business, what they love about their work, and how difficult it has become to operate in a climate of uncertainty and with rules written to protect the interests of huge corporations and crush the creative, industrious, and community-oriented entrepreneurs like them.
Take Carolyn’s company, which she founded in 1991 and operates here on the Seacoast. They make toothbrushes and other dental care products for children and people with special health-care needs. She was inspired to start her company watching the ingenuity and compassion of dentists working with patients who have special needs. Now, as she explained to me, she works full-time trying to figure out the logistics of how to ship supplies and products across the border to Canada—plagued by the uncertainty created by Trump’s unpredictable trade policy.
Small Businesses in downtown Portsmouth
There’s also Jim who has a metal fabrication building in Candia that manufactures prototype parts and serves as a one-stop-shop for practically any custom-designed parts and equipment. For Jim, the challenge is the volatility in pricing and purchasing the supplies he needs to run his business. Large multi-national corporations with monopoly control can absorb this volatility or simply pass it on to their customers, but small-businesses don’t have this luxury. For Jim, the success of his business and the strength of his community go hand-in-hand, which is why he brings his adult children to protests and goes out of his way to stay involved in local, state, and national politics.
It is fitting that small-business Saturday comes on the weekend after Thanksgiving because I feel immense gratitude to Melissa, Carolyn, and Jim and all the other small-business owners around New Hampshire’s First District for investing in our communities and sharing their stories with me.