Go Local!

Today is the first day of Independents Week, celebrated each year to promote the importance of supporting locally owned business of all types, whether it be a restaurant, a boutique, a beauty salon, an auto repair shop or a bookstore.  Any given indie may be quite large, offering employment to many in the community, or so small that the owner is chief cook and bottlewasher.  In either case, they have one particular financial aspect in common and that’s the return of money to the immediate area through payroll, local taxes and day to day expenditures .

For every $100 spent in an independent, locally owned business, $68 remains in the community.  For every $100 spent in the local branch of a national or regional chain, $43 remains in the community.  For every $100 spent online,  $0 remains in the community.

To put this in more accessible terms, I’ll use our now-defunct storefront as an example.  Annie and I had two employees so we paid wages which were, in turn, spent primarily in the Richmond area.  We paid a number of local people for services—our CPA, an attorney, a janitorial firm, occasionally a window washer.  We paid rent and purchased advertising in local newspapers and radio & TV stations.  When we had special events, we purchased food and beverages, plus all the paper goods, from indie grocers.  We bought some of our office supplies from local stores.  We purchased books from local authors and publishers.  Our coffee and tea supplies and equipment came from a local distributor and our furniture, other than the shelving, came from local stores.  And, unlike most online businesses, we paid local taxes.

I could go on but you get the picture.  This slow (moribund) economy is destroying much of our independent business and national chains bulldozing their way into our neighborhoods hasten the process.   If we want to have choices in where we shop and want to retain the character of our towns, we all need to support independent business as much as possible.  My favorite rule of thumb is the 3/50 Project—click on the image below to find a simple way you can do your part.

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July 1, 2010   Posted in: Tales of a Bookseller

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