By Emily Adelman.
PART 3: Growing Pains
Now, as far as our policymakers are concerned, the local shift is going to be more substantial, and it might hurt a little. All across our fine nation, the paradigm for economic development for a long time has been based on a certain type of law of attraction. The assumption is that there are big job-creating, revenue-generating businesses out there to be seduced into settling down in our state, our county, or our city by tempting them with tax incentives, public investments, and other kinds of shiny things.
The problem is that the public investment (sacrifice?) is huge and the payoff is not always consistent. Economist Michael Shuman, author of The Small Mart Revolution and a Montgomery County resident, is a great resource who’s got his finger on the pulse of the plethora of studies that show that cultivating local businesses is a far more effective use of resources than the seduction method. Shuman has created a handy checklist for consumers, investors, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and community builders to foster a strong local economy.
In December of last year, the Montgomery County Department of Economic Development invited Shuman to present at a roundtable on local economies. This gives me hope.
At the same time, there’s much to be done while our local government is still just getting its toes wet. I believe that now is as good a time as ever to move beyond nostalgia for Main Street. We need to start putting our money where our mouth is. I’m not saying that we all have to go as far as one loyal customer went to save his local video store in Missoula, Montana (as heard on NPR), but we can start by thinking. Think about what you need to buy and where you’re going to get it. First, think about your local options. Second, think about everywhere else. All this thinking should take place, of course, before the actual buying.
If we all start thinking local first (get it?), the effects would be tremendous.
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If you need some help finding locally-owned businesses near you, these websites may help:
www.buylocalsilverspring.com
www.localfirstwheaton.org
www.greattakomadeals.com
www.thinklocalfirstdc.com
www.buylocalbaltimore.com
Emily Adelman is currently working with Local First Wheaton, an alliance of independent businesses, to produce the Wheaton Shop Local Guide that will debut in May 2009 at The Taste of Wheaton. She also is working on the Buy Local Silver Spring campaign and helped produce a guide to over 200 locally-owned establishments in downtown Silver Spring.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Everybody Loves Main Street, Part Three
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Everybody Loves Main Street, Part Two
By Emily Adelman.
PART 2: The Multiplier Effect
Maybe you’re thinking, “How is buying the same roll of dental floss at an independent pharmacy instead of a big-box chain store going to save the world?”
Well, I’m not promising it’s going to save the world, but the economic relevance of locally-owned businesses should not be underestimated. The Small Business Administration consistently reports, most recently in September 2008, that small businesses:
• Represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms.
• Employ about half of all private sector employees.
• Pay nearly 45 percent of total U.S. private payroll.
• Have generated 60 to 80 percent of net new jobs annually over the last decade.
• Create more than half of nonfarm private gross domestic product (GDP).
It gets better. Let’s say that it’s lunchtime and you have ten dollars in your wallet. If you spend those $10 at a locally-owned, independent establishment, $6.80 of your ten bucks will stay in your community. The owner of the café where you just ate lunch will pay those dollars forward by, let’s say, using a local print shop to print the menus, purchasing local produce and ingredients, donating food for the local elementary school’s fundraiser, and paying local property and state income taxes. This is called the “multiplier effect”. Each dollar you spend at a local, independent business will circulate several times within the local economy, and over 2/3 of it stays in the community. (See the Andersonville Study of Retail Economics, 2004.)
That’s not all. Of all the businesses located in a determined geographic area, those owned by local residents and operated independently of a non-local corporation are also the most likely (and sometimes by default) stewards of the local environment. Studies show that local businesses use other local firms as suppliers and vendors, reducing the environmental impact of long-distance transportation. We have some local business leaders in Montgomery County who are setting the example in many ways:
• Local businesses by their very nature have the autonomy to choose their own suppliers and are more likely to carry locally-produced agricultural and manufactured products. (For example: Jackie’s Restaurant; My Organic Market)
• Local businesses are making efforts to further green their enterprises by converting to renewable energy sources and eliminating “dirty” processes. (The Gazette recently published an article on Wheaton businesses taking advantage of wind power.)
It makes sense to support these home-grown companies that have a triple bottom line business model (people, planet and profit). When they do well, their profits stay contained within the local economy and achieve a ripple effect.
Is it sounding good yet?
...Stay tuned for Part 3: Growing Pains...
Emily Adelman is currently working with Local First Wheaton, an alliance of independent businesses, to produce the Wheaton Shop Local Guide that will debut in May 2009 at The Taste of Wheaton. She also is working on the Buy Local Silver Spring campaign and helped produce a guide to over 200 locally-owned establishments in downtown Silver Spring.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Everybody Loves Main Street, Part One
By Emily Adelman.
PART 1: There’s No Place Like Home
For those of you who have lived near downtown Wheaton for a long time, you probably associate this eclectic little district with some place that you’ve gone to for years – such as Marchones, Wheaton Studio of Dance, or Showcase Aquarium. There’s likely several other businesses that are no longer here but remain as placeholders for some of your personal memories, such as The Anchor Inn.
The chances are very slim that you take a walk down memory lane when you gaze upon what I like to call the Ghosts of Retail Past: the former locations of Circuit City and Office Depot.
There’s something intuitively attractive and nostalgic for most people about Main Street and the unique small businesses that inhabit it. Even before President Obama started to use “Main Street” as a personified character cast in contrast to “Wall Street”, we have long celebrated the iconic local business as an ideal in our culture. It’s where everybody knows your name. It’s the diner you go to with your buddies at least four times a week. It’s the barber shop where you only get your hair cut once a month but where you stop in once a day.
Now, not every local business is as cheery as a Boston pub and not every local business lends itself to being what Ray Oldenburg coined the “third place” – the living room away from your living room, if you will. However, locally-owned and independent businesses typically can offer many advantages that may not give you a warm and fuzzy feeling but are still reason enough to stay local. Apart from not having to travel far to get what you need, high on the list of advantages are that the staff is frequently knowledgeable and the customer service is intentional. Some good examples of this are your local hardware store (Strosniders) and the independent pharmacy in your neighborhood (Upscale Care Pharmacy in Silver Spring; Kensington Pharmacy).
There’s also one particular myth that needs to be dispelled, such as the one that assumes that prices are necessarily higher at local businesses than at chain stores. They’re not. Do the experiment yourself. I’ve done several price comparisons in my day and I can offer you the results of one having to do with dental floss. I checked out Kensington Pharmacy and the CVS located in the same shopping strip on University Boulevard. My dental floss of choice (and I’m very particular about my floss) was indeed available at the independent drugstore, and it cost ten cents less than the same product at the chain store.
Okay, great. Everybody loves Main Street. So, you ask, why is this relevant?
When I listen to news about the state of the economy, it seems like we’re facing a monster that is too complicated to deal with: it’s global, it’s sliced up into pieces and insured and sold, and it involves ethereal things called (somewhat ironically) “futures” and “securities”. The good news is that the bread and butter of it all starts at home and there are things that we, and our local policymakers, can do to help re-establish stability in the local economy.
For the consumers — that’s us — it means shifting some of our purchases to local, independent sources.
...Stay tuned for Part 2: The Multiplier Effect...
Emily Adelman is currently working with Local First Wheaton, an alliance of independent businesses, to produce the Wheaton Shop Local Guide that will debut in May 2009 at The Taste of Wheaton. She also is working on the Buy Local Silver Spring campaign and helped produce a guide to over 200 locally-owned establishments in downtown Silver Spring.
