Buy Local

As you all know, I am an Iowa boy, born and raised. At this point, unless something drastically changes, I will probably die that way.  So, over the course of my lifetime I have watched a lot of changes throughout this state and the Midwest.  I have watched family farms get big; I have watched little old farmsteads fall to the plow - the land brought back into production, and I have watched unfounded attacks on these farms when companies attack them for being "factory farms" (yes Chipotle, I am talking to you).  But one thing I've watched and thought the most about over the years is the demise of the small town and the businesses that should be and could be thriving there.

I know that a lot of people blame the loss of business in small-town Iowa on large mass merchants coming into and taking business from older established businesses.  I really am not sure that I fully agree with that.  I will give you a couple of examples, one from years ago and one from very recently.

Many years ago, I sold lumber for a living in Des Moines.  At the time, I had a family member selling the same product in my hometown.  In fact, there were times that I would order product for min and he would pick it up, haul it to Sigourney and resell it.  Good for the American free enterprise system.  But, there was a Saturday that I happened to be home and I was sitting in his lumberyard talking (and probably drinking coffee) while he was invoicing customers.  I remember looking at an invoice that he was completing and being shocked by the fact that he was thirty to forty percent higher on the exact product that I was selling in Des Moines.  When I asked about it, he smiled and explained to me that Des Moines was 90 miles away.  Interestingly enough, a couple of years later when my Grandmother bought product for a new garage, it all came on a truck out of the Southside Payless store in Des Moines.  Even with the dollar per mile delivery fee, the local Sigourney yard wasn't willing to match the price.

So, now let's jump forward forty years.  I was in a smaller Iowa community this week, not as small as Sigourney, just not as large as Des Moines.  I've been working on cutting boards at the Toybox that I am donating to YESS (Youth and Emergency Shelter Services) for one of their fund-raisers, and needed small rubber feet to.  I remembered this just as I was passing a True Value hardware store.  Needless to say, I swung in to find what I needed.   I found what I needed - they had one on the peg. I probably would have bought two just to have an extra, but one would be enough.  I took the $3.00 item to the register and was told that I couldn't use my debit card since the actual purchase was under $10.00.  I have to wonder how many times that day that happened.  Since, I wasn't able to purchase what I wanted there, I ended up in Des Moines, at a large hardware store, buying it (and two extras since they had them) for a dollar less than I would have paid in the small community.

So what? You might ask.  I really wonder if the demise of the downtown retail areas in small communities in Iowa is because of large retailers, or because of short sightedness?  If you ever spend time in Maine, you will find that the natives there are fiercely loyal to the local merchants and not only do they not not like large chains coming in from the outside, but choose to refuse to spend their money in those box stores.  Again, I wonder what the difference is?  Is it that Mainers have taken these outsiders on directly when they entered their communities?  Rather than hoping that people would be loyal to the local merchants, have they done the right thing and made sure that there was a reason to shop locally?

When we were worked for Payless in Des Moines and new competitor opened in town, we put together a plan to show that we would never be beaten on basic items.  We matched or beat everything that this new retailer advertised, and we did not lose market share.  We gave up a little profitability, but we never lost our share of the local market.  Then, when our corporate structure told us that we couldn't do that, the minute we quit fighting, we started losing.  People went to check the new place out, and then stayed for selection and price.  We were never going to have selection, but at least we still had them on price.  The Japanese say that business is war, and I really think they may be right. The sad thing is that some of the people in our smaller communities don't understand this, or don't believe it's real.

The Saturday after Thanksgiving has become Small Business Saturday, an opportunity for people to re-discover their local small businesses. There will be a lot of promotion geared to that day all across the country. While it is great to ask customers to focus on the small businesses that live in their neighborhoods during that promotion, it is just as important ... no, it is more important for those same small businesses to consistently focus on their customers and how they shop and what makes it easy for them to buy locally, just as the big chain stores do.

Quit giving our downtowns away.  Stand up, fight, and win.