The 15th anniversary of Queen Anne's Holiday Magic festival filled the local streets and brought much needed business to the local merchants. The mantra this year is to buy locally. And by all appearances, there was great sales activity at the stores.
Not only does this support the creative talents of those brave souls who dare to open a small shop, it keeps our hard-earned dollars in our community. For example, for every $100 spent, approximately $45 goes back to the community and its tax base. This is the money needed for schools, parks, roads and libraries.
At first, buying locally seems smart and easy. But then some nagging conundrums start to surface. Not wanting to pit one store against another I shall keep this story a bit vague, but hopefully it will generate some thinking about the term "local." I discovered that a recently purchased item was a full $6 less (representing a full third of the cost!) at another store.
"Yikes," I thought. "What a fool I was to have not checked out the competition." Mumble, mumble, I was, shall we say, feeling distraught.
Settling down after the surprise, I started adding up all the benefits from my $6 community donation. The store I bought from is owned locally and hires local teens; the store has longer hours; the store knows me by name. And the times I forget to take a credit card or cash I simply sign for the goods, payable at a later date.
Following that logic, then one could say that Starbucks, locally owned, is a candidate for the buy locally mantra. Yet it doesn't feel too local, what with its worldwide operation. My sense is that the above example of a $45 return to the community would not hold up to the test. But should we shun the Starbucks and other large merchandisers? I would suggest, not entirely.
We need a lively mix, but perhaps we can use this recession/depression time to re-orient our buying habits so that they tilt more to our small businesses, for it is a well known fact that they are the true creators of job growth. We can each do our little part to keep our communities from having empty storefronts. What a blight that would be. Just thinking about such a blighted landscape makes me feel that I made a fine $6 investment toward my community's economic well-being.[[In-content Ad]]
