Unrelated: Shopping Local
Everyone sheds a tear when when a favorite local mom-and-pop shop goes out of business, but it took me a while before I faced up to the connection between those sad events in my neighborhood and all the shopping I was doing on Amazon.com.
I was an early adopter of buying online. My family shopped at eToys.com and Amazon in the very earliest days, the late 1990s, when the discounts were crazy as each vendor lost money in an attempt to become the dominant player. I’ve done major shopping online for years and years, including our last car. But at the same time, I’ve also frequented all the local shops in my neighborhood, and due to the peculiarities of our local architecture, almost all of the businesses in our long business district are locally owned.
As a homeowner and shopper I much prefer buying locally, for a huge variety of reasons. The service is 99% better, I much prefer browsing in person and shopping for things I can handle, I much prefer returning or exchanging items locally, I’ve had local shop owners go out of their way to make things right with repairs and exchanges. I can’t speak as a store owner or service provider, only as a shopper, but in every instance, shopping at my local stores is a much better experience for me. And most of the time, surprisingly, that includes price.
So now my family is on an Amazon-free kick. For the past few months we’ve completely avoided Amazon and other big, online retailers, buying our books from the local bookstore Community Books, our hardware from the local hardware store Leopoldi’s, our vacuum cleaners parts and supplies from a shop own by two Brooklyn brothers named Brooks. We quit the Zagat’s Wine Club and started going to our local wine shop to have them make us up mixed cases of wine; in doing so, we actually get to discuss the wines and customize each case much more to our liking than the online service allowed. In fact, we’re avoiding big national chains in general, online and off: rather than shop at CVS and Rite Aid, we pick up drug store supplies from the locally owned Ansonia Chemist, where we also do our prescription business.
We can’t shop from locally owned stores for everything. Clothing, for example, is tough. But we like the variety of locally owned shops in our neighborhood — we like the people who own and run them, and the personal service we get. We want to do our part to keep these shops around as long as possible.
So we shop the same way. I’ve been at record shops as long as I could, but then they shrinked to nothing but top sellers – so my records I buy them from Amazon now. But otherwise …
Hi, It’s nice to hear that you and your family are making such an effort last year. Every bit counts, and your support means a lot. As a small business owner, and a small label manufacturer of clothing since getting started in 1997 in NY/CT… we sell our label only to small boutiques, and I’ve worked with other small business owners and boutiques around the country for years, and have had a long even personal relationship with wonderful retailers around the country and abroad as I am in our booth myself selling each season. It’s harder than ever out there, and I hope you’re ominous tone of “as long as possible” doesn’t mean you think we will be extinct at some point. I have a small shop in Bloomington, IN and a small shop in Santa Barbara, CA now as the NYC has become mostly corporate, but there are still people hanging on. Our streets will be very bleak with out the creative people out there trying. Land lords these day just want a cash cow corporate deal but I have very good land lords in both my spaces, and they are family owned buildings. Very few places are locally owned or privately owned any more… that’s when we left Elizabeth Street and Prince Street, when things went corporate sadly. Amazingly, our space is up for rent again at 232 Elizabeth Street… it was a restaurant since we left in 2004, and I will keep an eye to see what’s next. That’s what I love about NYC.
Nice to hear from you, Shannon! Now that I know about your brand, I’ll keep an eye out for your label.
I posted that original rant almost a year and a half ago, and I’m more dedicated to shopping locally as ever.
We’re lucky in Park Slope. The business strip on 7th Avenue is quirky enough to make it hard for big chains to move in — almost all the shops are very small and very narrow, so there are mostly locally owned businesses. But rents keep rising, so we’re finally starting to see that change. There are national chains out there, like cell phone stores, looking for small storefronts, for example, and ugly juice bar and yogurt chains.
Anyway, good luck!