An event aimed at bringing the excitement of Black Friday to small businesses is set to hit Downtown Jacksonville soon. The 2nd annual Pinkmas event is happening downtown on Friday, November 17th, and Saturday the 18th.
Bailey Evans, owner of Modern Groove Boutique located in the Hockenhull Building on East Central Park Plaza, says Pinkmas aims to bring the excitement of Black Friday to shopping local.
“It’s basically like a small business Black Friday it originated from Pink Friday which was a boutique hub made up holiday just to promote small business shopping before people hit the big box stores. Just trying to bring the excitement back to small business shopping and make more like a Black Friday like it used to be.”
Colleen Flinn, who co-owns Flinn’s Mercantile with her husband Tim, says just about every downtown proprietor will have special offers during the two-day event. “The stores will be open later and the stores downtown- everyone is participating, and everyone has their own deals going on. You can go to the individual stores’ Facebook pages to see what they are, or there is a Pinkmas Facebook event and people have posted what they are going to be offering.”
Flinn says Evans and a couple of the other clothing boutique owners brought the idea of Pink Friday to the downtown business owners group and momentum for Pinkmas grew from there. Flinn says that the downtown group now has an active social media presence that is now known as Pretty City Jacksonville.
“We meet once a month to kind of talk about events and things we can do together. Pretty City was an Instagram started during Covid by Don’s Place owner Rachael Kesler, and she let us take it over so we could kind of feature things that we have going on downtown.”
Flinn and Evans say they feel they have advertised really well throughout Central Illinois so they are hoping for a good turnout for all of the downtown businesses of visitors and locals alike.
The second annual Pinkmas in Downtown Jacksonville is happening from 10 am to 5 pm next Friday and Saturday, November 17th and 18th.
For more information, go to your favorite downtown business or their social media. You can also find information via the Pretty City Jacksonville and Jacksonville Mai Street Facebook pages, as well the as Pinkmas Downtown Jacksonville Facebook event page.