California Apparel News

While many people are familiar with flash mobs—the choreographed but seemingly spontaneous dance performances put on by organized crowds—“cash mobs” are just catching on.

Andrew Samtoy said he is one of the first to have started the trend, which has been spreading to cities around the United States and across the globe.

“The whole idea was putting money into the local economy and supporting businesses owned by the community,” Samtoy said.

The cash mobs are people who come together to spend money as a group at a local small business. Usually, the participants organize via Facebook or Twitter and meet on a designated street corner at a set time. The store is not known by anyone other than the organizer, who selects it ahead of time based on criteria according to a loose set of cash-mob “rules”—such as the business must be locally owned (no chains), it must have products for both men and women, and it must have items for sale for less than $20.

The logic is that by supporting a local business, the groups are helping the local community, Samtoy explained.

“It’s important for us to be controlling the economies in our communities. How we’re spending our money is just as important as voting for mayor or city council because we’re voting with our money.”

Samtoy is a class-action attorney who came up with the idea while trying to think of a way to help a friend who owns a small consignment shop. If he could find a few friends to go to her store and each spend $20, it would be a boon to her business, as well as money straight into the local economy, he explained.

He and another friend started a cash-mobs blog and Twitter handle and held their first mob in November, in Cleveland, where Samtoy lives.

An estimated 40 people turned out and provided a local bookstore with eight times the amount of business the store normally brings in, Samtoy said.

After the success of the first mob, Samtoy’s friends in Los Angeles and San Diego told him they wanted to participate.

“It sounded really interesting, and I wished we had something like that in L.A. to be a part of and we didn’t, so I decided to throw the first L.A. cash mob last month, right in time for Christmas,” said Lisa Gilmore, a friend who grew up in San Diego with Samtoy.

Gilmore chose the Kellygreen Home boutique in Santa Monica, Calif., after researching stores online through the Buy Local Santa Monica website, and she planned the mob for the same night as the Santa Monica pub crawl on Dec. 18, promoting the event online through Facebook and Twitter.

The store rang in more than $1,000 in sales from the roughly 20 people who showed up as part of the mob, and the store’s owner told her it was her biggest day since opening three months ago, Gilmore said.

“They were really intrigued that we are a green store and that we advocate a green lifestyle and have eco-friendly sustainable products,” said Dana Miraglia, a sales associate for Kellygreen who was working the night of the event.

The store carries home goods, accessories and apparel, including sustainable house shoes, hats by Delux Knitwits, and socks and hats by Eco 2 Cotton that are made from regenerated cotton.

Courtney Kirkbride said she attended the L.A. cash mob at Kellygreen because her father is a small-business owner and she grew up knowing how important it is for communities to support local businesses.

She came away from the event with an iPad case made of “up-cycled” wetsuit material, eco-friendly dog toys, a towel made of 80 percent bamboo, and a Christmas present from her boyfriend, who also attended.

Gilmore, an online editor for Universal Pictures, said she was drawn to hosting the event because a lot of the stores that she loves are locally owned and she noticed many of them had gone out of business with the struggling economy.

Sophia Hall recently had her San Diego store, Make Good, mobbed by a local cash mob and said there has been a residual payoff of people trickling in beyond the event.

“We’re in South Park. It’s kind of a quaint little neighborhood a little bit off the beaten path, and we had a lot of people say, ‘Wow, I’ve never even heard of South Park,’ or ‘This is my first time to this part of San Diego,’ so it was cool to have so many people have a reason to come here and actually find us.”

The store sells secondhand women’s clothing and handmade items made by local artists in San Diego County or Tijuana, and it usually brings in $100 on a typical business day, according to Hall.

In comparison, the group of roughly 30 people who came as part of the cash mob spent $718 in one night, Hall said.

Samtoy credits a friend with coming up with the name “cash mob” and said there are now spinoff groups in cities all over the world, including Boston, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and London.

“I logged onto Facebook, and 14 cash mobs I hadn’t even heard of had popped up,” he said.

Later, Samtoy discovered a computer engineer in Buffalo, N.Y., named Chris Smith had originated the term “cash mob” and that he had started holding cash mobs in Buffalo last August.

The cash mobs aren’t related to any political agenda and don’t engage in fund-raising. The goal is simply to bring money and exposure to local businesses, Samtoy said. Anyone can start a cash mob, and anyone can attend. The only rule for participants is that each individual must spend at least $20 at the designated business.

“We don’t see it ending. We see it as part of a larger awareness of shopping local and investing in our communities,” he explained. “The whole ‘Buy American’ thing is a little vague, but ‘Buy local’ can have a profound impact.”

The next Los Angeles–area cash mob is planned for Jan. 8 in Burbank in the Magnolia Park area, and it will be a joint mob with one held at the same time in San Diego.

For more information on cash mobs, visit https://www.facebook.com/lacashmobs; https://www.facebook.com/cmsandiego; http://cashmobs.wordpress.com; and https://twitter.com/cashmobs.