Her Take:
Know this: If I’m on vacation in your town and there’s a sign that points me to the ‘Historic Downtown’, I am going there. Maybe there’s a shop that sells vintage-style postcards, or one with used books, or (GASP!) handmade soaps!!
Give me that, I’ll take ALL OF THAT.
You might as well throw in a coffee shop with a bakery or a cool brewpub with tin panel ceilings because I’ll hit those too. Both if there’s enough to see between coffee and lunch.
And, listen, don’t worry. I’ll buy things I don’t need from your shops, that’s a given.
$50 on gourmet malted milk balls? That seems totally reasonable in your cute little candy shop.
There is no shame in my tourist game, friend. I can FLAT OUT vacation.
I travel mostly with my long suffering husband whose main job is to be available to answer the question “OH MY GOD HOW CUTE IS THAT???”. (Let’s be clear, he doesn’t know how cute it is, he just agrees. It’s safer that way.) And we have spent our hard-earned dough in a lot of great downtowns.
And if there are enough people like us, things are pretty good for those ‘Historic Downtowns’.
They count on us to show up, we do, and sometimes that system works.
Sometimes.
Ready for the ironic part?
There are stores in my town where I can buy vintage postcards, used books, and (OH MY GOSH SMELL THIS!!) handmade soaps and I don’t shop there. In fact, there’s a store called the Trading Post in town that sells all of that and antiques, crafts, candles, and, I don’t know, almost everything you could possibly look for in a cute little downtown shop. It has room after room (after room, after room.. etc.) of interesting things at almost dangerously affordable prices PLUS it’s clean, well maintained, and has huge front windows absolutely crammed with amazing things. I don’t shop there and I don’t know why.
Well, ok, once a year on ‘Small Business Saturday’ I swoop in like their retail savior, feeling all righteous and stuff, and at least casually browse. I pick things up, hold them in my hand, pause for a good long time to REALLY LOOK AT THEM, and set them back down when I decide that I have time to order something online instead.
Right, ok, I get it. You don’t have to tell me I’m a hypocrite. I know.
There’s this cool place where I could be finding one-of-a-kind gifts for people and random awesome things for myself and somehow I don’t take shop there because it’s in my own town.
Listen, I don’t know how it happens that I know all of that I still choose to shop mostly at a big-gross-box-store that lets the profits leave my area to line the pockets of the richest family in the country.
I KNOW that’s not a good look.
I get it.
What I’m hoping to figure out is why I (and I’m guessing other people) do that.
I can offer you plenty of excuses.
When my kids were younger, the idea of taking all three of them into more than one store was scary, and exhausting (scarexhausting) so I didn’t do it if I didn’t have to. And usually I didn’t. When one store has flea collars, diapers, underwear, and milk all at the lowest price, why bother?
Now, I don’t care to think about how long it’s been since I could use that excuse, let’s call it ‘a long while’.
What’s my excuse now? Habit? Budgeting? Laziness?
Yup, that sounds right. Not good excuses, just excuses.
What I can tell you is that when you take my shopping habits, multiply them exponentially, and then drop them in the small to mid-sized towns across the country, there are repercussions.
In the last week Shopko, a retail chain that was founded in Green Bay, Wisconsin with 364 locations across the US, announced that they’ll be closing all their stores. To help put things in perspective, 46 of those stores (fully 12% of their locations nationwide) are within 100 miles of me. Including the store that’s precisely 1.8 miles from my house.
I have to drive past to get to the aforementioned big-box store that I love/hate every week and, while I probably shopped there as many as 10 times a year, that’s not much compared my weekly (at least) trip to the other place. So, because of the way we shop, Shopko filed for Bankruptcy, tried to sell to save it’s business, and ultimately failed meaning that all of their stores will be closed just three months from now.
Let me not sugar coat this, I need to do better. Families with small businesses in my hometown throw everything they have into making them a success but they can’t make ends meet because we don’t spend our money there.
I’m not supporting my local economy and when thousands of us have the same habits, it hurts people and the towns we live in.
His Take:
“A small business is an amazing way to serve and leave an impact on the world you live in.”
-Nicole Snow
All right, so this week I’m browsing the Daily Tribune app on my phone and I see that Shopko is going to close. Of course, I totally overreacted. Well, not OVER reacted, I reacted how any of us would have when learning of another Rapids institution that’s going away forever. At first I blamed this on Walmart until my best friend told me to actually read the article and I’d find out that Shopko going out of business was Shopko’s fault, and not Walmart sucking all the money out of Rapids other cash registers. But I wonder just how long before it does. It seems like every time I come back home for a visit, that another one of my favorite places has gone out of business. How many more can we lose? I wouldn’t be alarmed if this weren’t happening in every freaking town in America.
There’s a couple things to touch on here to really get the full picture of business in America right now. Today, 18% off all store fronts are vacant. While that may not sound like a lot to you, that number scares the hell out of me. I mean it REALLY scares me. Why? Because 18% is close to 20%, and 20% is close to 25%, you can see where I’m going with this. The American consumer has Sam’s Clubbed and Amazon Primed our way into stores that all look the same and carry the same stuff. The awesome little specialty stores that carry things that aren’t available at big box retailers are disappearing, and there is no getting that genie back in its bottle. EVER.
Unfortunately, my words aren’t going to change this, or even your opinion. But I hope it gets you to at least pause for a minute and think before you open the Amazon app on your phone or turn your car in the direction of Walmart or Target. It won’t change where you shop, only one thing can do that, and that’s money. As long as huge retailers have the buying power of small countries, their prices are going to remain cheaper than those of smaller stores that can’t order nearly as much. But think for just a minute at your shopping experience at a smaller store vs your experience at a big store…
When you go into a small, local business you’re likely to get greeted, perhaps even by name, from someone working there. When walking into a giant store your most likely to be greeted by the smell of rotisserie chicken and hopelessness. The employee at the local place is 100% more likely to take time to help you shop, show you different products and even order something special for you if you’d like. What you’re probably gonna get at the big retailer is grunted at and maybe the guy working there will point you In the general direction of what you’re looking for. The clerk at the local shop will ring you up, thank you for coming in and invite you back for upcoming sales or events. The person working the other place is happy that you’re leaving so they can go back to playing solitaire on their phone.
Look, I’m beggin’ you, the next time you head out to the store at least think about shopping at a place that doesn’t have stores strategically placed every 50 miles. After all, you don’t need 3,000 locations when you get it right the first time.
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