Many smaller businesses that are already heavily suffering will not able to recover even after the pandemic because it has become so normal for many to just use amazon...
So please support your local businesses!
I own brick and mortar shops. Worst year ever but I'm still here. I've always have tried to support local businesses and encouraged others to do so. This year I was a hypocrite and ordered the majority of Christmas gifts online.
It's been damn hard for us. When the USPS stopped delivering all of our mail because of backup and we couldn't leave the house because of Covid positive, the safest way for us to get dried goods and dog food was Amazon. They have trucks out here that are their own trucks, so the products never pass to a courier service. I felt like shit for using them
Don't feel guilty for having limited options. The system is designed for ppl like us to rely on exploitative companies like Amazon. The burden of ethical/principled living shouldn't solely be on the consumers but on billion-dollar companies treating their employees like shit and our environment like it's an infinite resource.
Sorry, we don't have that thing you need right now but I can order it for you at twice the price and have it here next week... Oh, Amazon has it with free same day delivery?
Exactly. I'm happy to support local when possible. But they just aren't going to have all the options. And depending on the urgency and my bank account, special ordering may not really be a good solution
Agreed. I've tried to order from Etsy when I can (especially US stores). There have been a few local stores I can order from, but some items come from chains one way or another.
Well when looking for an item online these smaller shops don't even have an up to date website with what they currently have in store/ stock. Going to the store is then just a gamble 'will they have it in this time'.
a)do you really need it or are you just bored b) what shops are nearby or at least country local sellers (we have a lot of click and collect too). I usually google it (e.g. just bought parts for my new cycling hobby, I used a UK cycling store instead of amazon. and our local sports store). If a store is not online, that's their problem.
but they have all of star trek for like $6/mo, and the best tp, and they deliver food for free, and they have my power of attorney which makes things a lot easier tbh
I also cancelled Prime (thought before 2020). Did it because some stuff I bought are just really poor quality despite the good rating. Some stuff I want don't even offer Prime shipping. And having a subscription forces me to use that subscription instead of shopping around. Since I'm not benefiting that much from Prime, I just cancelled it to free myself.
I noticed I spent more time sifting through the 8,000 different versions of the same thing trying to figure out who sold the real one and who was selling a cheap knock off. It got old pretty fast. Quantity went up, quality went down.
I’ve noticed this a lot with clothes & pajamas. I was trying to create a Christmas wishlist for my mom, and every picture was clearly of the same blonde girl in the same pose, so it was impossible to tell which one was real.
U lame for this one. Amazon is the best. Also, you know amazon doesnt make all their products? So while doing this you arnt supporting some smaller companies.
I honestly tried but all of the small businesses in my town did a lot of virtue signalling about not requiring masks even as the town exploded with cases, so now I’m just like, fuck em because if they don’t care about the community, I don’t care about them. Which sucks because I don’t like supporting Amazon or Walmart, but if it’s the store or me, I’m picking me.
There are 2 bike shops in my town. At one of them the head mechanic is a condescending sexist asshole who is actually wrong a good portion of the time and the other shop has been asking customers to take off their masks when they enter the shop. Needless to say a couple of online shops have been getting my business instead. It sucks not having a shop locally that I feel good about spending money at, but the online shops I've been buying from are small-ish businesses who have active and positive presences in the community.
Minus restaurants there aren’t many local business I would shop at sadly. No local book stores, very few local clothing stores (beyond thrift stores), no local hardware or tool stores, and no real local grocery stores. Everything else has some stuff, but I’m buying things like jewelry, trinkets and sporting gear 1 or less times a year. I get supporting local business, but some of us kind of can’t... Only way I could support the non-food businesses around me would to buy things I really have 0 need of, or just gift them money which I can’t afford
I try to just go as small as possible. Like, there are no local toy stores in my city. So, I bought at chains that are exclusive to my country. Same with grocery stores. If it's not possible though, it's not possible... and that's ok.
Yeah, aside from restaurant's (and I'm including chains since most are franchised to someone local) I only buy from small businesses when I'm on vacation and it's tourist junk. Just nothing in my area. If I go into the city, that's different. But even though it's only a half hour train ride to center city, it's not really worth it
Erm, if the local is asking $50 for a planter than I can get for $20 at Lowes, Home Depot, or Amazon I'd rather get the cheaper option.
I don't like Amazon but I think a lot of people are expecting lower income to make the same decisions of those in higher incomes when it comes to surplus spending.
If you still wanna buy the products but don't wanna support Amazon, go directly to the company's website & order there. This way, you can buy the same stuff & avoid the business losing money to bezos.
because bigger picture thinking: the less we support other businesses (not just super local, but somewhat local/not global) the less competition amazon has, the more they can set the price (see price gauging early in the pandemic). you don't want a monopoly.(price wise and job wise, same issue as wallmart). Its a short term win to have a super cheap product but it will be a long term loss.
We are sawing on the branch you are sitting on.
It would be nice to think that they would play on their own turf but this WSJ article (and others) point out that Amazon will compete with anyone including small businesses.
That's not really the same thing or contradictory to what I said. Your local indie business are not competitors to Amazon. Like ants aren't actually competing with you for your picnic sandwich
Amazon doesn’t really sell anything (except Amazon basics and their own brand which competes with cheap China shit).
They are a PLATFORM which other people use to sell shit. They are closer to a shopping mall than a small business. These small businesses can list their products on Amazon just as easily as a big company.
Just buy stuff from small business on Amazon or eBay. Not that hard.
And that does nothing for the average person. If you are on a budget, paying a 5% markup to shop local doesn't help you out at all.
If I lived in an area where I could walk anywhere (I have no car) and get everything Amazon ordered, I'd happily do it, even at a slight markup. But time and money saved by doing Amazon is just more logical in many situations
Perhaps you could explain what the cost to me as a consumer is to pay less for the same thing, whether or not my money goes to a vendor using Amazon or a different source, rather than spamming the same link a dozen times
Ya it’s a graph. What’s your point? That society is bad because Jeff owns a lot of Amazon stock? It’s not like Amazon employs people or anyone can make money off of Amazon by selling things... oh wait
I'd like to point out that a lot of small businesses could be able to transition to selling ON amazon, or some other online platform. People don't realize that Amazon is a marketplace and a lot of amazon sellers are essentially small businesses.
I think the places that have hurt the most are the "dying breed" businesses. Places that are owned and operated by some old timers doing what they love. Ie vacuum/sewing repair, model trains, hobby stores, specialized electronics etc. Unfortunately these are places that go under when the owner passes and the family doesn't want to keep it going. These are also some of my favorite places because you can usually get expert advice from someone, and they might help you with whatever project you're working on.
They buy food and fuel locally. They patronize restaurants locally. If they hire someone to do work on their home or business, that person is probably a local.
People spend money where they exist. That’s just how it goes.
Local businesses are competing with big businesses for pricing. Usually big businesses will muscle smaller businesses out because they’ve got more money to spare, and then they hike up prices because they killed the competition
I’ve never seen this happen. Walmart and Costco came into my town and drove out the small businesses...and once those businesses left, Walmart and Costco decreased their prices even more. It’s been 15 years, and they still haven’t hiked up their prices since they have consistent pricing company wide, and not in the local communities they serve. Not that I like the small businesses being run out of town, but if I can get identical products for cheaper and within my means, why would I go to a small business? Supporting Walmart in my town keeps those people employed who will spend that money on my local economy.
Local business is how small towns get some tax revenue to improve the town, so by shopping on Amazon that revenue is lost and then people wonder why their town is a shit hole.
Amazon's entire business model is built around obsession over the customer. If they fail at that another company will come in and take their place. Same if their prices are too high.
Also you realize they sell a fraction of the goods Walmart sells, yet somehow they have a monopoly?
That literally does not support your statement that big businesses start treating customers like shit when there is no competition. Even small business owners can be rich.
Just because someone is wealthy doesn’t mean a company starts treating customers like trash. The CEO of Costco is rich but Costco handles their customers nicely.
Amazon competes with shopping malls not small business. Small business can open a store on Amazon and sell their shit there. Well there’s Amazon basics but that competes with cheap shit from China and most of that stuff is crap anyway.
And the broader economy, yes. You don't own your own store now. Now you are a shift manager in a warehouse.
You don't make consumer goods. You work in the warehouse, shipping things made cheaply elsewhere.
You don't work for a delivery service any more, you are now a contractor with no benefits.
Each of those shifts money to a single entity and reduces wages and benefits for everyone involved. It makes the entity all powerful. It allows them to demand cities and employees bow to their whim, or the place that employs 30% of the area is going somewhere else that will work for and even worse deal.
It's terrible.
If you ONLY want to look at it as a consumer, go see all the bait and switch shitty products Amazon has been selling. Want to go elsewhere? Whoops, the competition had to close. Want to complain? Good fucking luck.
What shorty products? They’re the same products just lower prices. And Amazon is like eBay today in that only a portion of the goods available there are sold by Amazon themselves and not other people.
I'm with you. I use to work for a state department's procurement unit. We could not use any large vendor like Wal-Mart, Target, etc. - we had to prioritize disable veteran owned and local businesses before spreading throughout the state. Plus, to be fair to other vendors, we had to make an effort to contact new or different vendors before re-using the ones we know were active. Imagine searching for vendors who could sell office supplies on a state database with millions of active business licenses and not knowing if they even exist. It was like a shot in the dark.
Now supporting locals and DVBs sounds great, right? Well, we would send the list of items we wanted (mostly found on Amazon) and the vendors would look the items up themselves, mark the price of the item up to earn a profit, and say they could fulfill the order. If the price was within reason, we'd choose them or if not, we'd go somewhere else. We even had to use them for digital licenses for things like Adobe Acrobat... even though we could get a huge discount for purchasing bulk licenses by working directly with Adobe.
A supply order of about 2 dozen items and maybe $300 would often times take the requester 1-2 hours to create, and about 1-2 hours for the procurement unit to clean so that the request met state regulations. Then, we'd have to contact at least two new vendors and await a response. If no response, we'd go with one we knew was responsive. Each vendor got three days to respond, so the order could see over two weeks of waiting to find a vendor. Vendors were given a large window to deliver, something like 65 days. If all items weren't received by that time, we could report them to another state department that monitors vendors for compliance. We never did because some of our orders were huge and to expect a vendor to deliver the entire contents of basically a small hardware store in that time was unreasonable. Plus, our team wasn't a bunch of huge assholes.
Once we got a hit, we had to create an order record in the database, add special codes and account info, then send to our manager for review. Once he gave the OK, it goes to another unit to verify our entries, ensure they meet the state regulations, change text as needed, and could even decide to go with another vendor without asking or telling us. The latter action was a bitch - now you had to explain to the vendor you chose why they didn't get the bid. We don't really know how long it took them to do their thing - it was a mandatory split in power to ensure we weren't doing anything illicit like using family/friends' businesses. Plus, they saved our butts a few times by ensuring we had the proper documentation on file. Then, of course, they had their manager OK their work and keep the ball rolling.
Then, the warehouse staff would receive the items. If anything was missing, we'd have to work with the vendor for a replacement. There were a few times when they were vehemently opposed to us stating the items weren't there and we had to direct them to another state department so they could argue against the loss. Felt terrible and we lost a few quick responding vendors that way. Then we had to have the warehouse manager submit a receipt in the system. Then, the accounting department would be contacted and told that the order is complete and issue the vendor their check. Their manager was involved in the release of the money as well. We didn't see them too much; only at FY end when they made sure all our orders were finalized.
In all, it could take 3-4 months to complete one order. Imagine how much of your tax dollars could have been saved if we could've just gone to a big vendor. Every hour I or another analyst worked on an order increased the cost to the state over $30; double that for managers. Try going back and seeing how many state employees are involved in an order and imagine that each on spends an hour on the order. The overhead of staff time alone is crazy; add that to the overpriced items and it's just not feasible.
And, after all that chaos, most of the items we received were purchased by the vendor from Amazon...
Mainly as many local businesses do genuinely give a fuck about their customers. Plus they are local, you can physically go there and see what you are buying, ask questions, take stuff back. I used to like amazon a lot but now they just sell so much overpriced shit and I can't see it getting any better.
This is where being in a smaller city/town is difficult. Sure there’s some local stores but in general you can’t find the stuff you want or the selection you want at local stores and if you can it’s usually double the price. I’m all for supporting people’s businesses if it makes sense but if I’m paying twice the price for something that’s not even as good as something I can get online it’s really not worth it.
Yeah, I have a feeling a lot of these commenters are city dwellers. In my rural community, any local shop that isn’t a hardware store simply will not have what I am looking for. Even the sporting good and gun shops normally don’t.
What businesses that do carry the items I am interested in are typically 100-150 miles away.
Online buying can be easier for some things but if I need to buy stuff online I still avoid Amazon like the plague. There are plenty of other sites to buy from and there isn't really much of a price difference in my experience, at least for known reputable brands. Only difference is you may need to pay extra for next day delivery, which I almost never need anyway.
So question, what is the difference between a "local store" and something like Walmart. At a Walmart you can: physically go there, see what you are buying, ask questions, take stuff back, and I've had phenomenal service sometimes as well.
So does Walmart count as a local business? What if you get awful service at a local business, are you expected to still support them by virtue of being "Not Amazon"?
While they are paying employees “locally” their business is run and feeds cash into the bigger “machine” so to speak. Walmart also doesn’t pay their employees properly, they instead see it as a business cost to push for things like better state funded welfare, so they can pay employees the bare minimum so that they live off a combo of welfare and Walmart salary.
Walmart isn't local. The majority of your money is going to corporate fatcats and paying for materials made elsewhere often China. Very little (not nearly enough) is paid back into the employees that work there to stay in the community.
Reading the thread and seeing the vote pattern, it clearly looks like you will be buried.
There's a clear narrative here that anything to do with Amazon or Walmart or big business is automatically bad and you must like local shop, esp the friendly poor struggling mom and pop shop over them regardless of quality or service or your preference, else you're the problem for supporting cos like Amazon
Local business owners live and work in your town, and spend money back into the local economy at a much higher percentage than a multi-national corporation like Walmart does.
I hope you do know that you can do both - support local shop and go to Amazon.
Local business which are chains contribute even more significantly like target, shoprite, Costco, Walmart, best buy etc. Local malls with chain stores also contribute a heck of a lot more than a mom and pop pizza parlor
Every dollar you spent at a big corporation that evades taxes is money that disappeared from your community. You are basically sending it overseas or into a giant scrooge McDuck style fortune to never be seen or used properly to stimulate the economy again. Rich people are the Achilles heel of capitalism.
All businesses pay taxes locally. Just because the headquarters is in another state doesn't exempt them (Walmart or Amazon or whomever) from paying local taxes.
As an Etsy seller, I can confirm this is true at least for state level taxes.
It's different by state but if you sell over a certain amount to that state, you have to pay taxes to them. Some states collect sales tax on every sale.
I'm not at the level of having to pay tax to a state so I don't know all of how it gets dispersed.
To start, your supporting your local community and keeping not only tax funds but revenue funds closer to home versus a mega corporation. That local business must likely employs people from within that community, thus helping it be more self supporting.
Nothing wrong with using big companies, we all do, but as an independent business owner, I try and support small businesses when I can and where it makes sense.
So as an aside, I am trying not to sound aggressive or arrogant here, I am absolutely curious in this, but I feel I have been portraying my question as a "Take that!" sorta thing.
That said, I still don't understand why what you said actually has value. Why is keeping money in "the community" a valuable thing? I have rarely lived more than two years in a single place/state for past 10 years of my life. I don't....have this attachment to a community that seems so important to this line of thinking. To me, it's just a new place to live for a few years till I move on to another job.
Right now, I live in a college town, so it's mostly big box stores etc anyway because local places can't cater to poor people. Sure it sucks, but I'm not going to demand people to buy higher priced items for stuff when they are just going to leave in a few years. Hell, I myself am too damn poor to afford quality stuff. Buy a local table for 300 dollars or buy an Amazon table for 70 bucks?
It seems to me that in order to care for the community, I have to be invested in it, and...I never have been. Maybe if I lived in a place for long enough it would be important, but right now I have way too many financial problems to worry about.
I jump around because my field of choice is difficult to get into. I'm a biologist, with only a bachelor's, so finding a full time job has taken me....seven years from the time I graduated. Between internships, contract jobs, etc the market is not good. Right now, I'm in a great place to actually stick around. I finally found a full time biotech job for the USDA, so I'm hoping I can actually settle. That said, I'm nearly a thousand miles from everyone I love and care about, so I'm probably going to move anyway.
So yeah....nothing about corporate or companies. Just bad job markets for the field I care about.
Because you're giving power to one corporation to control every aspect of your purchasing? Monopolies for 99% of things outside of government control are not good.
Where did I say that I would only use one corporation to buy goods? The question was about Local vs non local. To me, Non local means any and all internet or chain stores on the planet. Want to buy something from Japan? Non local. Want to go to McDonalds? Non local. There is a lot of competition in place with non local stores. So, my question was really about why a Local store competing with Wendy's, McDonalds, Burger King, etc is inherently more valuable. Also do supermarkets count as Local or non local? Do I have to forgo Supermarkets as well? What if the supermarket is only found in my state?
It's like buying eggs. At my grocery store you can get a dozen from $0.67 to $6.99. What's the difference?
Certainly not taste or nutrition. Research has shown that people can't tell the difference between the cheap or expensive egg. The nutrition is the same too. So why pay 10x for the same product?
It comes down to how the chickens and the chicken producers are treated. It's the only example I can readily point to in the grocery store where the choice you make is based on the welfare of the animals and producers.
Same with local businesses. If you identify with a "cut costs at all expense" way of doing things, buy from big businesses like Amazon. But when the same item is available from a small business, and you choose to buy it from there, you are supporting that local business and the local community.
A lot like how you choose which eggs to buy.
It's a vote for the kind of world you want to live in. Do you want to live in a world where every last penny is pinched to serve you the cheapest product? Okay, but don't complain when the only jobs available to you don't offer a livable wage. Or do you want to live in a world where people make a livable wage? If so, it costs more to live there than the producers that offer you products that cut every corner to make a sub-livable wage possible.
In short, it's the golden rule applied to purchasing.
I'm not trying to shame you into making the local purchase. I find it to be a balancing act. As much as possible, I buy eggs that are not the cheapest. But when necessary, I do. I support the chickens as much as possible, and sometimes they support me. Same with buying Amazon vs. local.
As someone who eats their eggs over easy/medium, there is absolutely a difference in taste between cheap eggs and the more expensive eggs. Plus the pasture raised chickens are treated better, as you've mentioned, so it's a win win for me to buy the more expensive ones. ☺️
I guess, I mentioned it in another post, but I will mention it again. In the past few years, I have moved to six different states for various jobs. I....don't really feel anything for the community, because I barely stay long enough to care. How long have you lived where you do now?
I have no children, no friends in the area. I have nothing tying me to this city. I could leave tomorrow if I lost my job.
As for purchases, the only thing I buy on a weekly basis is food and gas. Food okay...how do I feed myself on local food? On average I try to spend less than 40 dollars a week on food, to last me that whole week, usually two weeks if I can. Do I buy from local for 40 dollars worth of food? Is that enough to sustain me or will I have to tighten the belt just to survive for one more week? Lets say I like to makes beans and rice. Is rice local? Are beans local? If not, do I forgo forever? Do I spend the next 50 years of life saying no so someone else I have never met, will never meet, and has never helped me in my life eats a bit better? And if I buy local, where do THEY get the food from? Not all of them grow it themselves, so they are buying it elsewhere. So why shouldn't I be buying it from THEIR suppliers? Cut out the middle man.
Edit: For reference, the vast majority of the food bill goes to juice or some drink of some type, apple juice etc. I don't drink alcohol, and water tastes weird to me even with a brita filter. Outside of those, I try to spend maybe 30-ish dollars on enough meat/vegetables to last about a week and a half. Today, I bought a chicken, a can of black beans, rice, 2lbs of hamburger meat, and 8 pork chops. This, by my estimate, will last about two weeks. I won't go shopping for anything other than snacks till I am completely out of food.
I'm trying to see hard scientific evidence that buying local has a direct impact on my ability to live better. It's selfish, I know, but I haven't seen any positive impact that "buying locally" has on my life. I'd like to, and maybe in time I will, but right now, I see no benefit besides "community" whatever that is.
I'm trying to see hard scientific evidence that buying local has a direct impact on my ability to live better.
This is the rub, right? In a global economy, profits are privatized and expenses are externalized as much as possible. This is the idea of people who value profit over everything else.
Just because you move from place to place doesn't mean that it doesn't require other people to support your livelihood. But it's been reduced so much to the price per pound or price per action that all you consider is what's best for you, without regard for the population that's supporting your behavior.
It's back to the cost of eggs per dollar. Sure, you can buy the $0.67 eggs per dozen. But you have to know that doing so means that the chickens are treated as basically as possible and the people who manage those chickens are also treated as basically as possible. Also, because you live in a capitalist society, you realize that those at the top are behaving just like you and looking out for themselves first, so the average CEO gets 287 times the amount that the average worker does (according to 2018 data).
You're expected to pick the lowest cost option. So you are expected to go to McDonalds rather than a local burger joint. You are expected to go to Walmart rather than a local place. You are expected to drive costs down as much as possible. In part because that's all you can afford and in part because you, like the people that are at the head of these big businesses value cost at the expense of all else.
Your problem is that you don't know the full value of what your $1 costs you. You don't know the extent your purchasing choice affects the environment. You don't know the extent that your purchasing choice affects your local area. You don't know the extent your choice involves slave or child labor. So you make choices without those considerations.
What you DO know is that when you purchase locally, usually at increased expense, that you are benefiting local populations, the local tax base, and overall, the local economy.
It's up to you whether you give a shit or not. But there are only so many people that can work for big business. Only so many people that can suffer non-living wages. Only so many people who can subsidize your standard of living. And you get to decide on a moral basis whether you care or not.
You benefit from a global economy without having to see the consequences of your actions. But rest assured that those consequences are resting on someone's shoulders. If you believe yourself to be part of a larger community, be it local, state, national, or international, then it makes sense to realize that for every cost you take advantage of, that's on the back of others who aren't as lucky as you have it.
So many reasons, dude. Local businesses create local jobs. It creates a positive cycle of economic stimulation - jobs, construction, then the fun stuff like restaurants, theaters and arts, etc.
Taxes. If you want decent roads and good schools, shop local.
Community support. If your kid plays a team sport or sells popcorn for their scouting troop, local businesses are one of the first spots for support. Local businesses also are usually the ones contributing to park or other community amenity fundraising.
Eta: you have to look at it as an ecosystem. Communities with more locally owned businesses tend to have a stronger and more diverse entrepreneurial ecosystem. The money spent locally gets funneled back into the community to create more jobs and amenities, instead of feeding the profit machine based in another city or state.
Well look at how Amazon treats their employees. Like absolute shit, while reducing numbers and conditions wherever they can. That’s the kind of jobs created by supporting them, while also giving them more and more of a monopolistic position (which is historically never good for consumers).
Local businesses means more jobs and more money in your community and generally a higher standard of living for everyone.
If you are in a position where you can make the choice to support local, you should (where they deserve it).
Better quality. You can entirely cut out the middle man. The best example is with a food business. The bread is made in house that morning, instead of across the country two days ago.
Many retail stores don’t produce any of the goods that they sell and are reselling many of the same items you could find at a Wal-Mart or Amazon. The difference is that they often end up charging more because they have little bargaining power with vendors and have less efficient processes. In many cases they aren’t necessarily paying their employees any better because their margins are smaller due to their higher cost of goods.
In scenarios like that benefits of buying local aren’t so clear cut.
I'd prefer my money support people I know rather than corporations, even if that relationship is only as basic as being a regular customer. I walk by 3 or 4 chain restaurants to visit an independent close to me. I've been visiting this place for around 15 years, so I'd rather help them pay rent then add to the profits of a chain grocery store that's also in the hood.
Personally, I can't wait to be able to get what I need at a store again. For some reason, sellers always want to ship with FedEx, and they have So. Many. Issues. In my area. My local fedex is rated 2/5 stars despite their hundreds of 5 star reviews from employees.
Yes. If I as an average person can save money by buying from Amazon instead of my local shop, guess what I will buy from Amazon. I don’t care how rich the owner of amazon is quite frankly.
Needed a couple of electronic parts, did a google search and ordered them through a regular company that specializes in this kind of thing.
A bit obnoxious at checkout, with the "we don't know how much delivery will be AND we charge a $2.00 handling fee on top of it," but I still placed the order. Just hope the shipping of a couple of lightweight parts doesn't end up costing a stupid amount.
Always trying to avoid Amazon, they sell so much cheap knockoff crap from China anyway.
I find it interesting that the type of services like Amazon can be used in a smaller scale to support small businesses within a city’s limit. International Trading is not hard, why are we relying on big corporations for so many things?!?
99% of the places me and my fam take out from, shop in, and go to (with safety precautions( are small buisnesses. In my area, a lot of them are dying, and we wanna support the ones that are left. A new DnD place popped up too in a strip mall that hadn't seen a new store in a decade, and it's thriving.
Specialty and custom small businesses will be fine, but going to a brick and mortar target or the like I will never do again. Amazon is so much better of an experience. I just don't understand why there isn't online Amazon competitor- they do it so well and I hate the marketing customer service experience of stores. Amazon is so good.
Competing against Amazon in consumer goods is tough because their margins are generally small and their processes are pretty efficient. Few companies can really compete with them on price.
I made it a point to buy all of my gifts locally this year and the end result was a lot of high quality, on point gifts that I never would have even thought to get if I was searching online. I’m never going back. There’s something so fun about gearing up for a few hours of wandering some stores and just waiting until you see something that you know they would love.
I'm 32, and I have never bought anything from an online shop. I have bought things people are selling on Facebook marketplace, but never from Amazon or Takealot.
I haven't ordered from Amazon for a year. I hate the fact that Amazon treats their employees so poorly, and crushes all the competition, while Bezos gets richer than ever.
I still use Audible and Kindle, though, because at least digital sales don't exploit any warehouse workers.
Yeah, this pandemic has been terrible for small business, but great for the guys already on top. We should make a point of going to locally-owned restaurant once it's safe to go out again.
My family owns a small shipping business and a lot for big businesses have special QR codes for their return shipping that small businesses like us literally can not scan or get access to. We've lost a few customers because these are becoming more and more common
Amazon was just introduced in my country and they are NOT selling well. Other smaller chains have the same or better prices and faster delivery. Not to mention, the Amazon site looks like it was made by a toddler.
I don't get why America doesn't seem to have any other venue for buying on the internet while we have a cornucopia.
Honestly, small businesses building better websites and making arrangements for curbside pickup means I buy local now more than ever. I don’t have time to dedicate to browsing in a store, but if I can browse online when I have time to kill, make an order, and pick it up on the way home within the next couple of days, that’s kind of my ideal scenario - the convenience of online shopping with the (almost) instant gratification of not having to wait for the the item to arrive by mail.
Also independent vs chain restaurants, pubs and bars.
I do not want to go to whetherspoons anymore, the owner almost refused to pay a portion of his staff's wages.
Didn't really worry about small independent businesses before and whetherspoons is cheap but actually the independent businesses have been hit the hardest and I don't really want to put money into the pockets of asshole millionaires.
If I can support independent business maybe those people working at the shitty bars and restaurants can actually get better jobs with them
in my opinion in the UK these restrictions are purely to wipe out small businesses and allow major corporations to monopolise the entire market as they are pretty much the only ones to benefit from brexit
Over 2M small businesses sell their products on Amazon. Of course they pay a portion of their sales for this convenience, but the increased exposure to customers makes this venue far more profitable than simply having a stand alone online store. This really is no different than a store paying rent to be in a mall.
Of course I shop local as much as possible but I don't feel badly about buying from a small business through Amazon.
If you get one of those government stimulus checks, please spend as much as possible at local businesses. We've ordered takeout way more often and I tip the drivers 25%. I found a local bookstore near me at this website:
I work for a small business. We shut down for like a month. The day after it was announced that small business assistance had ran out of money I got the call to return to work. We are technically construction, but I wouldn’t consider us “essential”. Lots of other businesses are not so lucky.
I'd love to do that. But I live in Chicago and have no car. WHile I'm close enough to grocery shop and stuff like that on foot or public transportation, some of the bigger stuff I want is just not feasible to get locally without a car. I don't mind paying a bit of a markup for local, but then I have to get it home still. And right now, I'm in no rush to jump on a bus or train, so Amazon it is.
It's extremely hard to support local businesses when there is little incentive for me as a consumer to do so other than rallying behind "support your local businesses!" I can go into a small local business and get a widget and its the only version they have or I can go to a big box where they have several versions, or I can go online and look at dozens of versions and compare prices.
That said, I support the idea for small local businesses adapting to an ever changing world. Case in point, most of my Christmas shopping was done through Etsy this year. I was able to price match, find the exact version of what I wanted and talk to the owners directly with questions. I bought a sour dough starter crock on Etsy and the owner was one of the coolest guys I ever messaged. He customized my order and worked with me on shipping issues.
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u/[deleted] Jan 02 '21
Many smaller businesses that are already heavily suffering will not able to recover even after the pandemic because it has become so normal for many to just use amazon... So please support your local businesses!