American Express founded Small Business Saturday® in 2010 to support small businesses at the start of that year’s holiday shopping season. But small businesses face the same crowded holiday marketplace every year. That made the challenge for 2011 even more daunting: to empower small business owners and consumers to make the day their own, to create a movement with sustained support and to cement Small Business Saturday as an enduring part of the holiday shopping calendar.

Small Business Saturday might have been our idea, but it was one that needed the active participation of business owners, consumers and public officials to succeed. To do that, we built a grassroots movement around Small Business Saturday. With social media as the engine, we encouraged the small business owners of America to take over the day, rallying their consumers and public officials to support an annual holiday dedicated to small businesses.

We launched our movement around one simple message: Shop Small. Over the years, we’ve given business owners the tools they needed to take that message and spread it. From printing in-store signs promoting the day to creating a Facebook page for their business, small business owners are the front lines of the Shop Small movement, getting the word out, generating excitement and making the day their own. We’ve also given consumers the incentives and tools to easily participate and community amplifiers and corporate partners the tools to get involved and spread the word themselves.

Small Business Saturday was continuing to grow year over year, becoming a top 10 trending topic on Twitter and reaching 3.2 million “likes” on Facebook, with millions of Americans proudly shopping small. In 2011, the United States Senate unanimously passed a resolution declaring November 26, 2011 to be Small Business Saturday, making it an official day. Shoppers topped expectations, spending $5.5 billion at independent merchants in 2012 and two years in a row, elected officials in all 50 states championed Small Business Saturday, including President Obama.

In just three years, a single annual event has helped transform the way America thinks about small businesses: Small Business Saturday.