Steve Mensing, Editor
♦ Every year for the last 3 years Rowan County consumers are making more and more purchases on the internet where they discover super deals and just about everything they wanted. They don’t have to drive some distance, waste gas money, battle for a parking spot, or fend off a stick-up artist in downtown Salisbury. On the internet, besides finding great deals, armchair shoppers get FREE and rapid shipping. No hassle with having to fight through crowded aisles or be saddened by vacant storefronts in a downtown in the late stages of blight and rigor mortis.
In Rowan county “shopping leakage” is a fact of life. Most Rowan County residents drive out of the county to Afton Ridge, Concord Mills, Huntersville, Mooresville, Charlotte, and Winston to do their shopping where they can find more of what they want at better prices in big box stores. Those towns even have great independent niche stores with hard to find specialty items.
You can still do some okay chain big box store shopping in the Bury in areas like Tinseltown, Wallace Commons, the West End Plaza, the stores strung out along Jake Alexander Blvd., The Walmart Super Center (Salisbury’s Number 1 retailer), and along East Innes. Sometime in 2015 shoppers will be able to enjoy Dick’s Sporting Goods, Hobby Lobby and yet to be named stores in the not too distant future out at Summit in the county.
When I hunkered down in Salisbury I did shop on occasion in local merchants, but admit as a consumer advocate I was turned off at seeing “shop local” stickers on the door or reading the dopey “shop local” propaganda that makes claims about evil multi-national corporate chain stores, their slave labor, and how their money lines the pockets of narcissistic pigs living in gated manses far beyond the desperate claws of hometowns. Here is an updated version of my dump on the arch enemy of the consumer: “The Shop Local Movement”.
Now Let’s Start Unmasking the Anti-Consumer Claims of the “Shop local movement”:
• Shopping local is best for the consumer. Not a chance. Shopping local is only advantageous to the independent shop owner and not the consumer who pays higher prices and often above list price to independent retailers. Large chain stores buy enormous volumes of product at cheap prices and resell them to cheaply to consumer. The large chain retailer also operates from the profit motive which makes them look closely at the needs and wants of the consumer so these stores supply more of what the consumer desires. There’s a reason why we go to Walmart, Target, Costco, Sam’s Club, Staple’s, Best Buy, Lowe’s, and Dollar Tree–they give us more bang for our buck and exactly what we want. If they happen to be local stores–super they enrich our area’s tax base. Or we do a bee line to Amazon or Half.com on the Internet. Again far more consumer choice and more savings.
• Local independent merchants pump money into the local tax base. Yes, but very little compared to the chain retail giants. Be aware it’s the large chain retailers that lift up Salisbury’s tax base and not these mom n’ pops. Without the Walmarts and other large chain retailers in Salisbury, our city’s tax base would shrivel.
• Corporate chain stores import goods from other countries. Yes and if you examine just about all the local independent shops you’ll notice they sell imported goods or recycled goods from overseas. Where do you think the cloth and many of the raw materials come from to make the goods sold at high prices in the junktique, bric-a-brac, and trick-novelty stores on Main Street? Hint: China, Japan, Korea, Bangladesh, India, and Mexico. Yoo-hoo many so-called American Made products are manufactured from materials imported from overseas.
Here’s another wrong-way street the shop locals speed down: If we stopped importing goods and raw materials from overseas, wouldn’t it follow that overseas would stop trading with us? Think of what would happen to our faltering American economy if we couldn’t trade our goods overseas? If you are globally-minded and humane would you enjoy seeing more starving people in China, Mexico, and third world countries? Wouldn’t you rather keep them trading rather than receiving Care packages?
• Locally grown food is better than what you buy at chain supermarkets. Wait a fat second. Walmart and most chain supermarkets buy produce in season from local farms. Just check the bins during the local growing seasons. And most local chain supermarkets also carry locally grown organic fruits and veggies in season. Know too that rapid shipping and quick freezing, at the point of origin preserves much of the produce’s nutritional value. And guess what? Supermarket chains sell food cheaper because they buy large quantities of it. Go to Aldi’s, Walmarts, Harris Teeter, and Food Lion. I buy at farmer’s markets too when they are open.
•The big corporate meanie chain stores create monopolies. Okay–where? They are involved in free market enterprise. They compete against each other with joyful abandon and their competitive prices are passed along to us consumers. Right here in Salisbury we see the downtown “shop local” merchants hurting us and our city big time by their monopolistic stranglehold on Main Street. These NIMBYs and their historic preservation allies do everything within their power to keep out competition from chain stores. They are the reason why we are not seeing any worthwhile shopping there and why most people avoid going down there for anything but the eateries and the bars. Love to see a fleet of bulldozers go through some of downtown Salisbury’s blighted areas and create a super block or two of suitable for a Trader Joes, a Best Buy boutique store, a Joseph A. Banks, a Mega Books-a-Million or any of the hundreds of other chain stores that make for worthwhile shopping. These stores would attract consumers to our flat-lining main street and might actually help some of the more worthwhile downtown niche stores survive. Instead of confabulating fantasies about our “vibrant” downtown shopping, why not coax in some of the big boys and have something that will attract consumers?
• Only the “unsophisticated” and “tasteless” shop at big box stores like Walmart and K-Mart. Often the shop local movement puts forth in their propaganda that their pricey shops are somehow elite and sophisticated and they preserve some lofty culture above the rabble who find little interest in high-end marketing. In truth most folks prefer to be guided by natural shopping law–buy what they need and want at competitive prices. This was one of the many reasons why Fibrant’s early “fine wine” snob appeal marketing failed to make any inroads in Salisbury against Time Warner Cable, U-Verse, DirecTV, and DISH. Consumers don’t want to pay more for badly performing services.
• Locally owned businesses provide better service. Patent nonsense. I’ve witnessed extremely lax service from family members in downtown shops as I have from chain stores. Some of the best service I’ve ever encountered was at chains like Walgreens, Best Buys and Books-a-Million.
• If you don’t buy local you don’t support your town. More drivel. The big boxers lift the local economy with jobs, pump up the tax base, and provide much required goods and services. The shop local movement preys on the consumer guilt and most resent it, shopping elsewhere. Why should we enrich someone who sells over-priced goods, keeps our favorite retail stores out, and then tries to parasite off our school system for the imagined economic benefit of a downtown Central Office. The county taxpayers might have to pay for a “Taj Mahal” because of Salisbury’s downtown merchants lemming like push to save their own hides.
• A study done by “the Institute of Local Self-Reliance” promotes the idea that revenue spent on locally owned businesses stays in the local economy. Is there a conflict of interest in a study being done by the Institute of Local Self-reliance? Hang on! Employees of chain stores spend into the local economy. Chain stores use area services like HVAC and painters. Who hasn’t seen local owners and their families shopping in chain stores in Kannapolis and Concord?
• Claims that local merchants create more jobs and better pay locally than chain stores. How many of these shop local stores have family members working in them? Pay decent wages or even supply health benefits? Chain stores possess larger staffs and on the whole have far better labor practices owing to their being corporations and are more liable to be targeted for suits because of their big pockets.
• Large corporate stores don’t donate to local charities. The record of large chain stores in philanthropy is outstanding. Walmart and other mega-giant retailers give many millions away every year in philanthropy. Their giving is unparalleled.
Don’t buy into the mindless guilt trip. Save your money and buy nationally!
http://rowanfreepress.com/2013/09/15/videos-salisburys-main-street-ghost-town-usa/
http://rowanfreepress.com/2014/04/07/video-downtown-salisbury-n-c-s-south-main-wastelands/
