Think Globally, Buy Locally
Picture, if you will, a world where there are no more retail stores to visit. Driving down the highway, you pass the same giant billboards for the same giant big-box stores. In town after town, exit after exit. You arrive at your hometown and see more and more commercial spaces with the ever-present “For Lease” sign hanging. And you find yourself wondering what ever happened to that little specialty shop that had those kind and knowledgeable sales people: real people, who could understand and relate to your own needs as a customer and perhaps even as friends? What’s very likely is that they’ve been driven out of business because they are incapable of competing with the high-volume sales and low overhead of their big-box and online competitors. Make no mistake: when they are gone they are gone for good.
It’s happening right now in your town. In your community. And it’s happening for the same reason: we want the lowest price possible for our goods, and in the heat of our shopping we aren’t seeing the bigger picture of how our online and big-store purchases are quickly dismantling the character of our communities. Overly dramatic? Take a drive around your town and look closely.
One such big-box music retailer has the internal motto of
“Total World Domination” over its competition. It
seems like healthy Free Enterprise at first glance. Their business
strategy targets competitors by scoping out their locations and
establishing themselves nearby. They offer select items at prices well
below cost to generate buzz and encourage larger-ticket purchases. The
small retailer cannot possibly match these "Loss Leaders" and is
eliminated, typically within three to five years. Employees of the
large retailer are paid very low wages and are themselves struggling,
often forced to compromise their own ethics in order to make the sale.
Huge showroom floors provide irresistible eye candy to first-time
customers who are often given misleading advice and poor follow-up on
the products they buy. It is not a long-term relationship model; it is
a short-term, sell-it-now-and-move-the-goods strategy that serves no
public interest. Free Enterprise? Yes. Profitable? Yes. Healthy?
Perhaps for the distant shareholders of the company but not for us.
Before deciding on a purchase, consider the source as well as the product. Do the store owners serve on the Board of their local Chamber of Commerce? Do they actively participate in community activities and fundraisers? Will they repair your product onsite? Do they provide educational programs and mentoring opportunities for students? Do they stand behind what they sell to the point of wanting to “make it right” for you as a customer because of the relationship they’ve forged with you and because of your particular needs? Are they staffed by individuals who have made their career out of retail sales based upon a love of their craft and a desire to share their knowledge, or by commission-driven employees trained solely to increase a store's bottom line? Listen closely to the din of the big-box showroom floor and your intuition will tell you that something isn’t quite right.
It’s up to us as consumers to pause and reflect on where we buy before we buy. Picture, if you will, a world where every town we drive through actually offers something unique, something memorable and something rooted to its hometown origins and you’ll be picturing a happier, healthier and more diverse world.