The holiday shopping season is upon us and Small Business Saturday, is Saturday (Nov. 28.) 

Small Business Saturday encourages consumers to shop in your community and support local businesses.  (Lainie Lewis of State Street Trading Co. of West Columbia is in the feature photo promoting Small Business Saturday.)

Small businesses in West Columbia, and across the country, count on your support. Local mom-and-pop shops, restaurants and service providers are participating in Small Business Saturday.

Access Multimedia at 1111 B Avenue in West Columbia is one of those local businesses that depends on you shopping locally. Its regular hours are 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. and Access Multimedia has been serving the local community for decades. The business converts video tapes and film to DVD. It is owned by Eddie and Kim Stroud who live on the West Columbia Avenues. 

“We copy and put your family’s memories from video onto discs,” said Eddie.  “We organize and transfer audio, video, film, slides, and photos. We transfer, convert and scan them to DVD, CD or other types of files.

Access Multimedia can do just about anything with images, including photo restoration and producing prints. Access Multimedia does HD video production and editing, too. 

Kim said during the pandemic this year people were home and it gave them time to find their old media files. 

“It has been busy in 2020. With the pandemic, people were home, cleaning out closets and cupboards,” she said. “They found their old video tapes and brought them in to us to have us convert them to CDs.” 

One local business is doing more than just serving customers in West Columbia. He is  attracting permanent residents.

Michael Mayo is the owner of Palmetto Outdoors and he spoke at the Cayce-West Columbia Chamber Breakfast Tuesday. He incorporates West Columbia’s Riverwalk to conduct thousands of tube trips down the Saluda and Congaree rivers over the summer.  He is taking the “shop local” effort to the next level. 

Mayo, who serves as many as 10,000 visitors a year, said one-half who come to West Columbia to float the river come from a 50-mile or more radious. He said river tourism draws clientele from Florida, Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, and many more states. 

“We want to encourage visitors who come here and patronize our local businesses to relocate here,” Mayo said. 

Mayo also encourages West Columbia’s businesses to connect the Congaree River to their business.

“They come here and see that beautiful river, and they are looking for somewhere to move, so they move here,” said Mayo. “We push the value of the river.” 

Mayo said Small Business Saturday is a good time to look forward.

“We have so much to offer,” he said, “I see a bright future ahead. In 2021, we see nothing but growth in this area.”

When you’re thinking shopping destinations, West Columbia is also a focal point for locally owned antique shops.
Small Business Saturday provides an excellent opportunity to patronize those shops.Below is a list of some West Columbia antique stores:

• State Street Trading Co.
  134 State Street
  (803) 550-9048
• Old Mill Antique Mall
  310 State St
  (803) 796-4229
• Three Rivers Antiques
  615 Meeting St
  (803) 814-2102
• 763 Meeting Street Antiques
  Antique furniture store
  763 Meeting St
  (803) 796-1516
• Meeting Street Interiors
  614 Meeting St
  (803) 791-0008
• Attic Fanatic
  251 Charleston Hwy
  (803) 828-4036
• ADD VINTAGE
  1217 Augusta Rd a · Near Mooneyhan’s Auto Service
  (803) 821-8208
• Parks Furniture Antiques Ltd
  3131 Sunset Blvd
  (803) 791-4071
• The Elephant Trunk
  2931 Platt Springs Rd
  (803) 791-8765
• The Warehouse SC
  312 State St
  (803) 834-7557