Northern Irish marketing graduate David Clarke has created a map of local Northern Irish businesses to support this Christmas.
November would normally be the month that people start keeping an eye out for Christmas gifts and making trips to the high street to find what we need, but the pandemic has decimated city centre footfall. As we prepare to potentially spend the holiday in lockdown, most of us have turned to online shopping to get what we need.
A group of Reddit users collaborated to come up with a list of all the local businesses that are still open for Christmas shopping, broken down by category or gift type. David Clarke then turned the list into a map showing business locations, allowing people to shop hyper locally if they want to.
He also sourced the majority of businesses through Facebook groups and received even more support thanks to a recent Belfast Live article highlighting his work.
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The ShopLocalNI interactive map was created in Google maps, so every business entered into the map also has all of its Google details listed, including website and phone number. You may also be surprised by how many of these local businesses have already adapted to offer delivery on items.
The list is one of the most comprehensive directories of NI businesses selling gifts and other Christmas items, and includes a large number of home businesses and start-ups that normally would find it difficult to gain traction next to big online stores. If you plan to shop local this Christmas, head over to the map to check it out or access the map directly below:
