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When Borders announced plans to open a franchise in the progressive bastion Austin, TX, two independent booksellers felt it incumbent upon themselves to prove, in cold, hard numbers, the benefits of buying local.
The Economist narrates the tale:
BookPeople and Waterloo called in Civic Economics, a consultancy. They went through the books and found that for every $100 spent at the two locals, $45 stayed in Austin in wages to local staff, payments to other local merchants, and so on. When that sum went to a typical Borders store, only $13 went back into circulation locally … Dan Houston, a partner at Civic Economics, says that in recent studies he has found that locally-owned businesses put about twice as much money back into the community as the chains do, not three times, as the Austin study found. But that is still enough of a “local multiplier” to catch people’s attention.
Loath to miss the latest trend, even the big boys are feigning local. A franchise opening in Seattle eschewed its Starbucks namesake in favor of "15th Avenue Coffee & Tea" (note the local feel exuded by the ampersand).
The economic logic of paying two dollars extra for a book at an independent bookseller, should be apparent. It is:
1) a localized and individually designed stimulus plan.
2) what the article somewhat derogatorily refers to as "local protectionism," ie, an act to protect the economic health of your local community and support entrepreneurial can-do.
3) an act of self-interest, cause unless you ride the gravy train to work the chances that your dollar expended will see your pocket again decrease with every mile it moves outside your community.
To round it out, here’s a big-up to my favorite local bookstore. The Community Bookstore, Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY.
Feel free to add your own favorite, locally-owned spot (bookstores or whatever) in the comments below.
2 Comments
Great piece, Lance. If “Shopping Local” becomes a mainstream movement, more corporate franchises will pull that trick. Which means consumers will have to do their research and get to know the small business owners to know which are legit.
My favorite locally-owned business is in Honea Path, SC – the Black Cow Coffee House. In addition to serving great coffee and desserts (and the only public WiFi access in town), the owner uses the profits to fund a charity that provides home repairs for impoverished seniors. Talk about local dollars going the extra mile!
The independent bookstore scene in the Twin Cities has been devastated — first by the chains, then by Amazon.com and the general falling-off of readership among a Twitter-trained society that would faint if confronted by a typical hundred-plus-word sentence of Thoreau’s.
That’s why it’s good to see that Garrison Keillor’s Common Good Books, which opened in the face of these twin threats to educated reading, is doing so well.