Spend with Us: How retail therapy can help small towns in the bush

The tyranny of distance often stops country businesses from reaching a broader audience, but small business owner Sarah Britz has come up with a solution.

Sarah Britz has been nominated for the 2024 Shine Awards, which celebrate the achievements of rural and regional women across Australia. Click here to nominate an outstanding woman you know.

The importance of supporting small businesses and rural towns has never been more important to Sarah Britz, especially as the cost of living starts to bite.

And she’s spruiking the merits of treating yourself to a new item of clothing or bespoke piece for your home while helping boost the economy of a small bush town.

The creation of Spend With Us, an online marketplace and community platform uniting small businesses across rural Australia, was the result of Sarah wanting to support regional towns in the wake of the 2020 summer bushfires.

“I’m a web designer by trade, and I came up with the idea to create one central platform,” the Fountaindale NSW resident said.

“We’ve helped so many small businesses, helped them embrace e-commerce selling, and to reach an audience they might not have been able to.”

Businesses signed up to Spend With Us – Buy from a Bush Business are a part of a central platform, where they can create their own free website store. Shoppers can then browse wares from right across regional Australia from the one site.

This enables a small boutique in remote NSW to be connected with a buyer in Perth, Western Australia, Sarah said.

And during a cost-of-living crisis, Sarah said putting money back into small town economies was of paramount importance.

Spend with Us founder, Sarah Britz, of Fountaindale in NSW. Picture: Supplied

“It’s a very challenging time. So many small businesses haven’t been able to continue because they’re not getting the sales they were previously,” Sarah said.

“One of the reasons I started this is that so many small businesses want a website, but don’t know how to do that, and we offer that service so they don’t have to pay for a host website.”

With Father’s Day around the corner, Sarah encouraged people to shop around online instead of buying from big department stores.

“People can help out just by coming onto the marketplace and shopping, exploring the incredible products, they can join our Facebook group, even if they don’t spend.

“By just engaging with businesses when they do have a special occasion or the money to spend, they can come back and support them.”