By David Harry

Staff Writer

The tastes, textures and trades offered by local businesses will be on display next week as South Portland Buy Local celebrates its first anniversary.

The group of about 190 businesses in South Portland and Cape Elizabeth will host a public celebration at the Snow Squall Restaurant, 18 Ocean St. in South Portland, from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Tuesday.

The event will showcase a successful first year for the organization, said association board Chairman Dani Nisbet.

Nisbet, owner of Belissimo Salon on Ocean Street, said creating the association and buy local movement came after she and other business owners began talking about the poor economy a couple years ago.

In more than 30 years of owning businesses, Nisbet said times had never been tougher.

“We had never seen anything close to what we were seeing,” she recalled. “There was like nobody coming in all of a sudden.”

Nisbet said she began talking with Fresh Look Cleaners owners Nick and Laurie Moulton, among others, and when Laurie Moulton circulated fliers about joining together to local businesses, a buy local movement patterned after one in Portland  developed.

“I could feel the spirit in the room and the need,” Nisbet said.

The buy local organization was formed as a nonprofit in February 2010, with a board of directors, officers and advisory committee. 

Advisory Board Member Liz Darling of Maine Roofing Inc., who helped organize Portland Buy Local, said it was a “natural fit” to invite Cape Elizabeth business owners to join the association.

The association held a launch party in April 2010 and Nisbet said the first year goals were elemental.

“We needed to get to the core stuff” –  designing a website and creating a member directory, she said.

Then came membership drives that Nisbet said were educational and enjoyable.

“It was really a lot of fun on that first member push,” Nisbet said. “I went out and pounded the street.”

A study by the nonprofit Institute for Local Self Reliance found $45 of every $100 spent at local independently owned business stays in the community. At a larger national franchise, the rate is $14 of every $100 spent. 

The buy local associations in Bangor, Portland, Scarborough and Portland also joined the New England Local Business Forum, a group that supports local businesses. Its goal is to shift 10 percent of local spending from national franchises and chains to locally owned businesses.

As South Portland Buy Local stickers appeared on business doors, Ray Clark, owner of Cape Elizabeth Service Center on Cottage Road, said he took notice.

Clark has owned the service center on Shore Road for four years and it has been a neighborhood fixture for decades.

Part-time South Portland resident Wilma Marsh, sitting in the center’s waiting room,  said she has been coming to the service center for about a decade.

“They just have reliable, good service,” she said, and added she likes to buy locally at farmers markets as well.

That word-of-mouth endorsement pleased Clark. He said he prides himself on showing customers exactly what repairs are needed on their cars and his staff of 12 full- and part-time employees also pump gas for customers.

“If your kid doesn’t work here, your neighbor’s kid probably does,” Clark said.

He said it is too early to tell if joining the buy local association has boosted business, but he hopes it may draw customers who have relied on dealerships for maintenance work.

Getting the buy local group off the ground was time-consuming, Nisbet said as she styled the hair of Cape Elizabeth resident Gene Souter.

But heer work resonated with Souter, who said the city is a natural place for a buy local group.

“You can get anything you need here,” she said.