Each Year we bring you data as reported by brick and mortar shops who opt to share their experiences. We’ve captured quite a lot of

Bricks Need Mortar created and executed dual campaigns to most effectively drive foot traffic and spending to Portland small businesses for the 2025 holiday season.

2025 has proven to be a year of overwhelming information. From ever changing economic policy creating significant supply chain, pricing and consumer uncertainty to rapidly advancing AI technologies flooding communication platforms. 2025 has been a wild ride and yet, we’ve heard stories of remarkable resilience from our small business community.

Thank you to Jo Ann Lorraine for her info rich overview of Social Media for 2025. It was great having so many of you on

This month marks 5 years since Bricks Need Mortar conducted our very first survey reflecting the health of Portland’s brick and mortar small business community. We

Bricks Need Mortar went into the 2024 Win Big campaign with new strategies to address the unique challenges of conducting business in an election year.

Of the past 5 years, in many ways 2024 was the most challenging for our small businesses. For many small businesses cash flow was highly

As we come out of an uncertain year the one certainty is that the path to fully reopening The We Are Here 2023 survey explores

As we enter a new year with new challenges, it’s important to make note of our accomplishments and how we can build upon them to

Photo by Kim Oanh Nguyen @photosbykim Bricks Need Mortar founder and CEO, Sarah Shaoul, has been awarded Travel Portland’s President’s Award for leadership, innovation and

As we’ve now compiled data for 3 years, comparing data from one year to the next reveals some important differences worth noting. Small business crime

A big event with big numbers We invite you to review the data and input in the 2022 Shop Small Win Big Holiday Campaign report.

As we enter a new year with new challenges, it’s important to make note of our accomplishments and how we can build upon them to

If you’ve yet to invest in DEI work for you and your team, now is the time.  Bricks Need Mortar has been working with Woonwinkel

Bricks Need Mortar hosted a Candidate Forum on Monday, March 28th inviting candidates running for Portland City Council Seats 2 and 3 and Multnomah County

As we close in on 2 years operating under a global pandemic it’s important to take a look at what we’ve accomplished and where we

As we come out of an uncertain year the one certainty is that the path to fully reopening The We Are Here January 2022 survey

Small Shops Big Hearts Holiday Shopping Event takes placeFriday, November 26th and Saturday, November 27th We are excited to share this fun event with you!

PDXSOS began as a distress signal, a call to action to people in Portland to head out and support the small businesses that they love so

More than ever small businesses find they’re spending a significant amount of time and budget creating, scheduling and posting content for social media. Are  your

Bricks Need Mortar began with PDXSOS, a distress signal and a call to action for people to support our small businesses during the pandemic.  PDXSOS

The Associated press reports that mask sales rose 24% and google searches for masks have doubled in the last week with the news of the Delta variant’s