This is part of a year-long ‘Love for Local’ series called NB365: portraits of New Brunswick entrepreneurs, businesses and organizations. Huddle is a media partner with Love for Local. Today, we hear from Brent Harris of Saint John Tool Library and DIY centre.

The Saint John Tool Library started in a living room meeting in 2017, when people from the south end of the city came together to try and understand how we could solve the problem of dilapidation in our neighbourhood.

Eventually, we discovered the model of tool libraries and felt it was a way forward in Saint John to solve a local problem.

SJTL is also a non-profit business that is built on a business model of membership and product sales. This hybrid brings the world of social-environmental impact together with a classic business perspective that has the ingredients of sustainability at its core.

Supporting local creates resilient communities. A big box store or franchise may deliver some local impact, but a local business, by nature, must go out of its way to find a fit in the local economy. This means that the fingerprint of business is unique and custom fit for the community in which it is established.