'Not Amazon' website seeks to boost local businesses across Canada

A Toronto woman is hoping to shift online shopping habits to local businesses during the holiday season by making the experience as convenient as Amazon.

"I feel small business is what makes Toronto a great city, and to let them fall by the wayside during a pandemic would be the worst," said Ali Haberstroh.

On Nov.22,the day before Toronto went into a second partial lockdown, the social media manager built a spreadsheet with categories and links tolocal shops to remind herself to shop locally.

Haberstroh shared her spreadsheet on her Instagram account.

"I thought 100people would see it ... but I had no idea it would blow up the way it has," she said.

She decided to turn it into a website, Not-Amazon.ca. In the three weeks since the site went live, it's had 100,000 views, grown to 500 listings in the Toronto area and expanded to include 1,500 local businesses in Halifax, Vancouverand Calgary.

Haberstroh says she wanted to create a space that highlighted BIPOC-owned businesses.

WATCH | Founder of Not-Amazon.ca wants to help local businesses stay afloat during the pandemic:

Founder of not-amazon.ca wants to help local businesses stay afloat during the pandemic

4 years ago

Duration 0:54

Ali Haberstroh founded the website not-amazon.ca, which lists more than 2,000 local businesses across Canada and is helping drive online sales for shop owners.

Shoppers discovering more local businesses

Some shop owners told CBC News they didn't know they were on the site until they saw their online sales spike.

"On that particular day during the Black Friday weekend ... 79 per centof our traffic came from a source called Not Amazon. So I was really interested because I had never heard of it before," said Morgane Saba, who helps her mother run Douce France, a shop on the Danforthin Toronto that sells imported French pastrydough, chocolate and delicacies.

Saba said initiatives like Not Amazon circulating across social media have helped small businessesspread theword withouthaving to pay for costly advertising.

"We're all struggling with getting online and getting those orders in and still surviving the holiday season, because typically it's one of the best times of the year for many small businesses," she said.

Haberstroh saidshe doesn't profit from the website.

With the site building momentum in the Greater Toronto Area, people across the country asked Haberstroh to help them build lists on her site of local shops in their cities.

The Halifax page was the first to be added.

Nadene Gillis, owner of Halifax's vintage decor store The Lemon Shop, asked that her business be included. To her surprise, she was already on the list.

"I was floored," she said."I had noticed an increased amount of traffic to my website and I was like, 'This so weird.'"

Gillis said it was a "heartwarming moment" when she received a sale from someone who ordered a vintage sewing bag after finding her business on the site.

"Not Amazon is just another kind of beacon of light for me as a small business owner to say, 'Hey, look, people do want to support local.'"

Driving online sales

According to a survey by professional services company Accenture, 71 per cent of Canadian consumers were planning to shop online this holiday season because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and 57 per cent were looking to buy more locally sourced products. The study was conducted in October and surveyed 1,537 Canadian consumers online.

For many small businesses, it's been imperative to launch an online store.

Tanis Bundihad to pivot quickly to an e-commerce platform when the pandemic hit. She and her sister opened The Green Jar, a sustainable and refillable home and cleaning suppliesshop in Toronto's west end, about a year ago.

Since Bundi's store has been listed on Haberstroh's site, online sales are up 550 per cent, she said.

"We had seen Not Amazon through social media initially, and we're really excited that there was a place where small businesses were supported," she said.

Buy local initiatives have helped, Bundi said, but her business is struggling in the city's second partial lockdown with overall gross revenue down 19 per cent.

According to the latest survey fromthe Canadian Federation of Independent Business,56 per cent of Ontario small businesses who respondedsaidthey will not easily survive the second wave of shutdowns.

Haberstroh saysshe hopes her website will continue to be shared widely.

"I think Toronto specifically is such an embarrassment of riches for culture, both in quantity and quality," she said."It certainly can go somewhere if we don't try to protect it."