BEVERLY — Being a small business owner in Chicago can be fraught with challenges — but local entrepreneur Keewa Nurullah hopes her new shopping initiative, CIRCULATE, will make it all a little easier.

Every month, Nurullah chooses a local store to host a shopping event, setting the vibe with music and family-friendly libations. The events are akin to “rent parties” thrown by Black people in big cities after the Great Migration to help neighbors raise money to pay rent, Nurullah said.

The idea is to encourage “intentional shopping” and get neighbors to support local shops, serving as a “love bomb for a small business,” Nurullah said.

CIRCULATE events are held at the end of the month, which is also intentional as that is when bills are due, Nurullah said.

“Typically in Chicago for retail, the worst months are the J months: January, June and July,” Nurullah said. “Everyone’s out doing stuff and going to the fests and enjoying nature and going to the lakefront, and people will walk in and out of stores and actually not really buy anything, just kind of enjoying the experience”

But the cost to small business owners of staffing their stores or vending at street festivals is often too high to be sustainable, which is where CIRCULATE comes in, Nurullah said.

“It’s really great, especially this time during the summer, to put an additional spotlight … on these businesses,” she said.

The wife and mom is no stranger to the struggle. Nurullah closed her South Loop children’s boutique, Kido Chicago, this fall after six years. Though she’s grateful for the experience of running a brick-and-mortar store, she said there are things she wished she’d known when it comes to marketing metrics and foot traffic.

Nurullah is focusing her CIRCULATE effort on the South and West sides, where small shop owners may not have the marketing budget to promote themselves. But a store doesn’t have to be in dire straits to participate.

Nurullah puts the word out on social media weeks ahead of the event, posting short clips of the store of the month to give people an idea of what to expect and a chance to learn about the proprietor. She uses email lists — her own and one from the featured store — to send out blasts.

The inaugural CIRCULATE event was held last month at the Beverly Phono Mart. Patrons thumbed through rows of records as a group of children colored in the corner and a DJ spun tunes.

Co-owner Mallory McClaire saw an impressive boost in foot traffic and revenue from the event, with a 280 percent increase in transactions, she said.

“Sundays are our shortest day … and we’re not cranking out hundreds of transactions a day,” McClaire said. “So seeing 10 or 20 more people coming through can triple the number of transactions that we would typically see in a day.”

Business has been steady in the weeks since, on par with the shop’s typical summer traffic, McClaire said.

McClaire said she and her husband and co-owner, Chantala Kommanivanh, are grateful to Nurullah for the assistance. Nurullah’s energy was infectious, and she did everything to ensure the day went smoothly, McClaire said.

“All we had to do was show up,” McClaire said. “Sometimes, any hesitation you have around things like this is like, ‘Do I have time for it?’ But she just made it so easy.”

That’s exactly the point, Nurullah said. 

“What I’m trying to do with CIRCULATE is connect economic activism with consumer education, using what I’ve learned as a business owner to share what I know about our own individual responsibility to our communities,” she said.

The next CIRCULATE event is 2-4 p.m. Sunday at Haji Healing Salon, 4448 S. Cottage Grove Ave. in Bronzeville. 

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