One spring day in May, Annie Philbrick needed 12 flower arrangements for the Williams School's senior girls' lacrosse team.

The epiphany she had about how to get them happened to coincide with an upcoming meeting at her Mystic bookstore, Bank Square Books, with the Bozeman, Montana-based American Independent Business Alliance, which was scheduled for the next day.

"This light bulb went off," she said. "I was thinking I would just drive home for lunch and drive to the A&P and pick up flowers there. And then I thought, 'That's silly: I could just walk across the street and go to my local florist.'"

At Mystic Florist, Philbrick said she found homegrown bouquets at reasonable prices.

"To me," she said, "that was a real mental shift I made, a conscious decision that I didn't need to get in my car and go to A&P to buy generic flowers out of the case."

Today, Philbrick is also the founder of the SouthEastern Alliance, a Wave of Independent Businesses, an offshoot of the American Independent Business Alliance, or AMIBA.

The new alliance, which is in the process of incorporating, has 38 members and aims to attract about 70 more in Mystic, Groton, North Stonington, Stonington, Pawcatuck and Westerly.

The group, which charges $50 for dues, will offer networking opportunities, a directory of members, and perhaps even a fair featuring locally produced goods and services, said Philbrick and Robert Utter, a SouthEastern Alliance (SEA) member and the owner of Other Tiger, a Westerly book store.

One-of-a-kind companies that make their own business decisions and those whose owners live within 50 miles of the store are eligible to join the alliance, Philbrick said. The goal is to help independents thrive, despite the proliferation of malls and big box stores.

Shopping locally "is a conscious lifestyle shift," said Philbrick. "All of that money is spent within the community. And it makes the town a place where people want to be."

Missing connection

Buying locally from independently owned and operated businesses is not the mindset of most Americans, said Philbrick and Chris Kepple, SEA president. He is also sales and marketing manager for Cottrell Brewing Co. in Pawcatuck. Major corporations from Wal-Mart and Target to Amazon.com have usurped business from the independents, they said.

"It's not that we're against those stores because they have a place, but there is a missing connection, people are disconnected from the things they buy," added Utter.

"If you have a garden, you grow something and you know what that is. It's one of the most powerful connections you can have in your life. That's part of our spiritual life that's missing. It's a deep thing, it's gone, and it has to return."

The idea of shifting purchases to support locally, independently owned businesses is not new. It is promoted at www.10percentshift.org, which posits that if 5 million New England households shifted 10 percent of their existing purchases from non-local businesses to Local Independents, it would create billions of dollars of new economic activity in the region.

At AMIBA, founded in 2001 by Jeff Milchen and Jennifer Rockne, 70 different Independent Business Alliances have formed across the country, and three have been established in neighboring Canada, Milchen said.

"These alliances are based on a model we pioneered in 1998," he said. "Since 2001, IBAs have formed in a diverse range of communities and are playing a crucial role in keeping opportunities alive for entrepreneurs, building more self-reliant communities, and engaging citizens actively in their communities' future."

The IBAs' purpose is to build strength in numbers and help members compete in the marketplace, Milchen said.

Across the country, many chambers of commerce already have "buy local" initiatives, but often all "local" means is "a physical zip code without regard to whether (the business) is locally owned or not," Milchen said. IBA members, in contrast, must be owned and managed independently.

Communities first

"We may be members of the chambers but the chambers can't be members of the IBA," said Philbrick. "The mission statements are very different."

Dan Curlan, who has owned Mystic Disc for 27 years and still works there six days a week, lives in town and does all of his shopping downtown. He became a SEA member, he said, because he sees Philbrick and Kepple actively promoting the independents.

"I am so into taking care of your community," he said. "Stop buying online and in big chain stores. It sucks the area dry of money."

At the May workshop with Philbrick, Milchen talked to about 20 would-be SEA members and saw a committed crowd. And that's good because, commitment is what it takes, he said.

"We encourage them to see this as a long-term effort," Milchen said. "We see a lot of buy-local campaigns come and go and have minimal impact. It's important to realize that it takes years to really create a strong culture of support. You need a sustained effort."