GREENVILLE, S.C. (FOX Carolina) – Businesses in Western North Carolina are still seeing impacts from Hurricane Helene with slower sales and fewer visitors to the area. With the holiday season a typically busy time of year, a new initiative hopes to convince customers to shop small this holiday season.

Heart of Brevard, a nonprofit organization focusing on maintaining a vital downtown, created Shop Local, Shop Late. The initiative is taking place from December 19-21, from 5-8 p.m. Visitors will be able to take a stroll down festive Main Street and enjoy extended shopping hours at more than 25 stores.

There’s also a Holiday Windows Walking Tour happening now in the downtown area. At least 30 businesses have fun and festive window displays inspired by the theme Merry and Bright.

One of the stores participating is O.P. Taylor’s. The toy store’s original location is in Downtown Brevard. They sell just about every toy from Bryer to Bruder and the holiday season is typically bustling and busy in stores, but Hurricane Helene is making this year different.

“Government, in their infinite wisdom, said, hey, don’t come to western North Carolina no matter what, because we got to clean up and you’ll be in the way, and there’s electrical crews everywhere,” said Owner of O.P. Taylor’s, John Taylor. “And well, that that happened pretty quickly.”

He said that he’s grateful for his loyal customers making trips to shop small, but added that his neighbors, the restaurants in Downtown Brevard are still struggling to recover business.

“I mean, so we’re back to normal and we’re ready to have visitors and guests come and play with us,” said Taylor.

From balls that you can play with indoors, to cars that race on a track, shopping small comes with suggestions for gifts that you might not get anywhere else. We asked John about the most popular toys for 2024. He said, “Well we have the O.P. Taylor’s top 10 list, of course that’s on O.P. Taylors.com.”

We did get a couple of sneak peeks at that list and it includes Olly Balls, Rubiks cubes, and zip string, but you can never go wrong with some of the classics. Taylor said, “285 new Legos were issued this year, came out this year.”

The toy store has unique finds, but also a demonstration area where kids can see if it’s a gift that fits their list. Taylor explained, “They come in here and they’ve never seen anything like it and it’s like hey what’s this, it’s a hula hoop, what’s it do, we’ll show you.”

You won’t find electronics at the store, so there are no video games, but John says these toys inspire creativity and imagination.

There are three O.P. Taylors locations. Two of them are in North Carolina. One is in Downtown Brevard and the other is in Hendersonville. The third location is in the Upstate in Downtown Greenville.

If you’re not able to make it to Brevard this holiday season, but still want to help, CLICK HERE to learn more about how Heart of Brevard is helping the community recover from Hurricane Helene.

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