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Big Frog St. Pete Joins “Shop Local All the Way” Campaign and Gives Back to EDGE Neighborhood

Sean Mulligan is no stranger to community support and giving back. From the moment he became the owner of the Big Frog Custom T-Shirts & More location in St. Petersburg, he’s been helping out other small businesses and non-profits in St. Pete’s revitalized EDGE neighborhood.

St. Pete Small Business Owner

“I’m a big fan of St. Pete,” said Sean. “I lived here for years but, because of my previous job, I never really was able to really get involved locally…all my business was in other states. As soon as I jumped into Big Frog about four years ago, we’ve been pushing to buy local, stay local, and support local.”

Sean’s Big Frog shop sponsors the summer camp t-shirts for Creative Clay, a St. Pete non-profit located in the EDGE that offers art classes for people with mental challenges to learn sculpture, painting and other types of visual art then sell their creations. Every summer, camp students create doodles and sign them, thus personalizing a t-shirt for each week’s campers. Sean creates and donates up to 200 t-shirts to Creative Clay each summer.

Another non-profit he supports on an ongoing basis is LiFT Academy, a school that helps children on the autism spectrum discover their innate gifts and talents. Big Frog supplies t-shirts and polos for LiFT’s uniforms and Sean set up an online store for parents to conveniently purchase apparel with any profit going right back to LiFT.

Shop Local All the Way

As witnessed by these and other strong community outreach, Sean is definitely all on board with the just-launched initiative Shop Local All the Way, a system-wide campaign Big Frog recently began to promote small businesses nationwide. It will run through April 2022. The idea is to support neighbor businesses in individual Big Frog communities – like St. Pete – by offering discounts, visibility on social media channels, and opportunities to win Big Frog swag and gear. With Big Frog leading the way, “all boats rise with the tide” and people are encouraged to “shop local” in their small town neighborhoods like St. Pete. It’s easy to participate and anyone can nominate a small business by visiting Big Frog in person or placing a nomination at BIGFROG.COM/SHOP-LOCAL.

“’Shop Local’ is something I can sure get behind since I’m pretty vested in the Edge,” said Sean, who is not only local Big Frog owner, but is also president of the EDGE Business District Association. “We are committed to attracting great small businesses to continue to revitalize downtown and keep making it a vibrant, local scene.”

The EDGE Business District Association is an “award-winning Florida Main Street and Main Street America™ that plans, promotes, and advocates to sustain an eclectic, vibrant EDGE District community while preserving its unique character.” Sean says it’s a collaborative effort of all the local businesses that work together to steer everything from new development, historic continuity, parking, and even coordinating holiday events.

Big Frog is located in The EDGE at 1018 Central Avenue, St. Petersburg, FL 33705 and is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturday 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Closed Sunday.