So when your grandfather was around, or at least when mine was, in the small towns of America was a General Store. It had just about every item that you might need for your farm or household. You could get food staples, like flour, sugar, salt and other things that a farm did not produce. Some might have milk and eggs and meat for the folks that lived in town. They had tools and clothes. They could get just about anything you needed for any repair or project that you might be working on. These were the main support for every small community in the country. They were owned by local merchants, employed local towns people and supported their communities where they lived, worked, went to church, their kids went to school and grew up.
Then came the “Big Box Store.” Specifically Walmart. They built larger stores in these communities and used their buying power to provide goods at lower prices than the locally owned general store ever could. This practice went on for years until they put almost every small general store operator out of business. Once they closed all of these businesses down, the general store operator had to find another source of income to provide for his family, often going to work for the company that ruined his very business. When Walmart had gained almost complete control of the rural retail markets, they began building in the cities. Now they are a major competition for every retail outlet in the country, and even other parts of the world.
So what did we, the consumer gain from that? Well though there are many excellent employees at every Walmart, and other big box store, they tend to have people that do not really understand customer service. Nor are they as well educated on the merchandise that they have as the old time general store operators had to be. You can say the same about the big box home improvement stores as well. They did the same to the smaller lumber yards and local hardware stores, for the most part. Their employees, though many of them are really good, for the most part they are nowhere near as knowledgeable as the guys at the old school hardware store or lumber yard. Their business model is to sell stuff, in many cases multiples sets of parts at a time when you only need one. They do not seem to look for ways to better serve their customers. They look for more efficient ways to increase their profits.
There is nothing wrong with making a profit. But when you push your customers through your store like the cattle that their grandfather raised and make them do all of the work from figuring out what they need to checking themselves out at an unmanned register just to keep your employee count down, you are not serving them very well at all.
I’d like to suggest another trend. Let’s look around for the small locally owned and operated businesses and support them. In my neighborhood there is still a generations old hardware store where someone who knows what he is talking about will walk you to the part, supply or tool that you need and show you how to use it or install it. It has been there for many decades and is still family owned. There are many locally owed coffee shops that are far superior to that corporate coffee made by you know who, that I will not name in my post. There are local bakeries, locally owned car repair and oil change operations, tire shops and yes even a small scale pawn shop that is more like that old general store than you might think.
We are the equivalent of a general store that also makes loans on anything of value, well almost anything. We don’t carry parts for your old tractor but we do have the tools to fix your car. We also have all of the modern conveniences that you would get at that big box store, but at a reduced price. And our employees know much more about this stuff than you might think. We enjoy learning about the things we have and try to do our very best to stay up with trends in many of the markets where we operate.
Small businesses like us know we need to earn your business. We don’t advertise on the super bowl and figure we will make our profit on high volume. We appreciate every single customer and strive to grow our operations the hard way, one customer relationship at a time. So the next time you need to buy something, in stead of heading to the national chain or that just point, click and ship it to me online giant, get up and go visit your local merchants businesses. You will find a neighbor working there who needs your support, who contributes to your kids swim team, who donates to your police officers and fire departments fund raisers. These are the people who you can go to when your house floods or gets blown over. We are the ones who get our boats and rescue people out of their homes during hurricanes. We go open our stores to offer supplies to people when the big box stores are closed. And we are the members of your local rotary, exchange or other civic club who provide scholarships for your kids to go to college, who provide for the local food banks and other non-profits in the community to make where you live a better place. We live there, we promote other small businesses there and we employ other neighbors who also do more of the same.
Sorry if I got a little preachy there but this stuff is important. Our small businesses are the back bone of the American Economy, not the Walton family, the corporate super merchants or Amazon, and certainly not Alibaba, Rakuten or Wish. Your locally owned and operated retailers and service providers are the ones who keep your community running. Help us keep ourselves running by doing business with us.