My Local Store Membership

We await the final analysis of the Christmas season. Did retailers meet objectives or were the economic situations as dire as the foreseers of gloom and doom predicted? We do not know. Even when the scrutiny is complete, it will not include the micro economics that are each of our own lives.

What will all of this wailing and gnashing of teeth mean for you personally, or your neighbor, or me? We won't know until we get through to the end of this crisis. Even then our own personal stories will not be complete. That is because we live the newly written parts every day, whatever the outcome.

In speaking to several small business owners in my town, I received a cautious, optimistic determinism. The newsletter from my local quilt shop contains the following passage:

As the year draws to a close, we want to sincerely thank you for your support. We know that this has been a difficult year for many and while we don't know what the future will hold we are looking forward to the new year with a positive attitude. While we aren't ignoring the happenings in the wider world, we want you to feel that Luella's Quilt Basket is a place of refuge, where you can come and enjoy some peace and quiet for an hour or two, either in a class, shopping for a new project or just breathing the sweet scent of new fabric! And as you make choices about where to spend your money this season and next year, we want to encourage you to support your local small businesses: the dry cleaners, the gift shop, the local cafe and the quilt shop.

Luella's Quilt Basket is everything I love about small business. It is a small, woman owned shop born out of a love of a favorite pastime, but it is so much more. It is a refuge. Its customers develop a club membership sort of feel. We belong and we encourage and support each other and any newcomers. It is so much more than just a fabric and sewing machine shop. It is somewhere friends meet and share and participate in a favorite hobby.

When my husband went to buy cigars for a Christmas present, he wandered into a small cigar shop with three men sitting together watching TV, smoking cigars and "shooting the bull". The sort of environment portrayed in the movie "Barbershop". They were more than willing to help the neophyte without the experience and knowledge to really make good decisions. Laughing, discussing life and engaging in their interests, small business customers all over the country, indeed all over the world, share a belonging and a membership that cannot be found in the national chain stores. The big box stores can never develop a small town atmosphere.

I am definitely not someone opposed to large business. There are so many instances where our lives are enhanced by the products and prices that large corporations provide. Not to mention that these large corporations all began as small business. As in most of life, we need a balance.

Large businesses have an economic advantage. They have the advantage of bulk purchasing, large support systems and the ability to offset poor economic performance by diversification. We benefit by what they provide. We would not have available to us the cars and washers and dryers and refrigerators that make our lives simpler if the corporations did not exist. I appreciate that we have those options available to us. There is a time and a place for the "big box'.

What they don't have is the personal touch. You cannot be a necessary part of Home Depot. If I walked into JoAnne's (where I do make regular purchases) with a half finished project and asked for advice on the best color for my accent fabric, I would be laughed at. I went once to JoAnne's to buy cording for some reupholstering I was doing. Asking the closest teenager working there, she responded with a flick of her hair and a disdainful, "We don't sell pipes here." She didn't know, Luella's ladies would have.

I love my membership to Costco but it does not compare with my membership to Luella's, or to my membership to my auto mechanic or to my husband's new membership to the cigar shop, or to Norm's membership to Cheers.

We find community at the neighborhood small businesses that formulates who we are. The same folks go out every Saturday morning to their favorite local golf course. I wouldn't change dry cleaners on a dare. We prefer the small local restaurant to give us the flavors of the area. And when I walk into Luella's (like Cheers) I hear, "Hi Karen, what are you working on?"

Times are very uncertain right now. There are many reasons to support the local economy. The best reason I can think of, though, is that they deserve our patronage. And that I don't want to lose my membership in my local shops.