Michelle Novy, owner of Run to the Sun Tanning Salon in Anchorage, Alaska, has decided to downplay Black Friday this year in order to make Small Business Saturday stand out. Novy will open the salon doors Saturday, Nov. 26 at 9am, one hour earlier than normal, and offer prizes and huge discounts to customers throughout the day.

The purpose of Small Business Saturday is to encourage shoppers to support local businesses in an attempt to energize the economy.

“I put on big events all year round. I usually go a bit overboard with it, too” jokes Novy. “For Small Business Saturday, we’ll have several discounts that change throughout the day, with 9-10am providing the largest discounts. But we’ll have prizes all day for our customers, like bogo tanning packages, gift certificates and several lotion prizes.”

Novy and Whitney Heskett, a salon employee, browse sites like SnapRetail.com to get ideas for their various events, which they begin promoting on Facebook and within the salon weeks ahead of time. This year, Heskett joined SmallBusinessSaturday.com, a site established in 2010 to promote small businesses the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

By joining the site, Run to the Sun was awarded $100 in free advertising materials, which includes in-store signage, email marketing materials, and small business badges – cardboard circles that customers complete when they make a purchase and are hung throughout the salon to show their support for their local small business.

Novy’s hope is that she can get others in her community to also support the event. “This is different because I’m not just promoting my salon, I’m promoting small businesses to my community,” says Novy. “It’s a lot of work to get events like this started, so having support from our neighboring businesses makes it a lot less overwhelming.”

In order to do that, Run to the Sun is changing the way local clients view one of the busiest shopping weekends of the year by making it less of a shopping chore and more like a celebration.

“We’re turning Small Business Saturday into a party. Everything is going to be decorated in blue and white, just like the Small Business Saturday logos,” says Heskett. “We’re making it like a party not only to show our clients how enthusiastic we are about it, but how they and other local businesses should be enthused about it too.”

To learn more about Run to the Sun Tanning Salon, visit their website at RuntotheSunAK.com. Also click on a link to their Facebook Page to see some of their advertising.

To learn more about Small Business Saturday and join the movement, visit SmallBusinessSaturday.com.

Is your Smart Tan member salon doing something special for the holiday season and you want us to know about it? Contact Nicole at NicoleH@SmartTan.com and let her know the details.