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The World Needs These Places Essay

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WOOSTER — “The world needs these places,” David Rowell said as he sat in a chair while his wife and friends shopped at the Village Gift Barn in Berlin Saturday.
Rowell and his group were among the thousands of shoppers in Wayne and Holmes counties who spent the day buying from locally owned businesses on Shop Small Saturday, a campaign initiated in 2010, but a concept that predates it.
Every year, Rowell comes from Willoughby Hills to spend a couple days in the Amish heartland following Thanksgiving. “The retailers and the small businesses keep this country moving,” he said. “Bigger stores do not have the uniqueness of a store like this. The staff is always polite and very nice.”
Ruth Schlabach, owner of the Village Gift Barn, was working the floor Saturday. “There are lots of people — lookers and buyers. It’s been a good weekend.”
Schlabach was one of several business owners, like Cheryl Davis at Today’s Kitchen Store and Carol Rueger at the Wooster Book Company, who said Saturday was good, but, so, too, was Black Friday.
Jeff and Amber Stadalsky, from North Royalton, were shopping in the Village Gift Barn with their son, Logan. They come to Amish country often. They were in town for Black Friday, stayed at the Amish Door Inn and spent some time in Berlin Saturday buying Christmas gifts.
They were looking for “stuff you won’t find near us,” Jeff Stadalsky said.
That is the environment Schlabach and her workers aim for. “We have lots of different products, and we try to
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