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Local Shops Trying to Attract Online Shoppers

by KREX News Room
by Courtney Griffin

Story Created: Dec 6, 2012 at 6:24 PM MDT

Story Updated: Dec 6, 2012 at 9:33 PM MDT

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.- Holiday shopping is going strong especially from the comfort of ones own home.

Officials say online shopping is taking over, due to the convenience and the 24-hour availability.

Area businesses are also working hard to cater to consumers through an online presence, in order to keep money spent locally.

"Cyber Monday this year was the heaviest day ever for online purchasing at $1.46 billion," said Diane Schwenke, CEO of the Grand Junction Chamber of Commerce.

Some local shops are making sure to be apart of the upward movement.

"We have a number of them here that are online, and it's a way for our local businesses to extend their shopping base and their customer base," said Schwenke.

Alida's Fruits and Enstrom Candies are two local businesses with an online presence, and they say their sales wouldn't be the same without it.

"It's helped business quite a bit. Without the Internet sales, we'd be way down," said Mike Helmer, employee, 20 years at Alida's Fruits.

Bringing outside dollars in, while helping out the local economy.

"The dollars spent on those purchases come back to our community," said Schwenke.

"Everything we do in our sales, online or not, is still helping local business, and helping jobs. We have a lot of people back in mail right now. This time of year we transition everyone from making candy, (we've made almost all our candy now), everyone who was making candy, is back working in the shipping department," said Doug Simons Jr., assistant director of manufacturing at Enstrom Candies.

Some community members say they'll shop online only if it's for a local store.

"In fact we're still ordering locally and it's less expensive to ship online, so it made sense," said Warren Broderson, resident of Grand Junction, 85 years.

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