I’m writing this post on Small Business Saturday.
As a freelancer, I’m not sure I qualify as a small business owner or even an entrepreneur; but I’m the son, nephew, cousin, and grandson of successful entrepreneurs. So, you’d think I would be waving the flag, proliferating the hash tags, and sitting at my desk today in solidarity.
I’m too pragmatic for that. I believe in the survival of the fittest and “May the best solution win.”
That’s also why I don’t buy into the whole “buy local” cause, either—even though I’ve been invited onto our local small business development advisory board. It would be hypocritical of me to endorse that message, since the overwhelming majority of my revenue comes from out-of-state clients.
Both the “shop small” and “buy local” movements have the same root cause: subsidize businesses to help them stay in business. It’s adding charity to transactions. The problem is that this blanket policy typically requires the consumer to pay more, sacrifice selection, or add inconvenience to the shopping process.
Don’t get me wrong: sometimes the service, expertise, or ambiance is worth those concessions. Many people will pay more for accessible expertise and superior experiences. I’m one of those “many people.” That business is earned and not endowed by sympathy transactions.
The onus for transactional value should be on each of us business owners to provide the best solution. If we find a niche and then serve that niche better than anyone else, we don’t have to appeal to charity or sentiment to stay in business. That niche could be proximity, or it could be product knowledge. Being small in size might even be the advantage in certain situations, because it makes us more flexible or gives the impression of exclusivity.
Whether the companies with the best solutions stay a certain size or remain in a certain geographic area shouldn’t matter, as their income will count as local revenue somewhere where people are saying, “Shop small. Buy local.” If we want to keep that somewhere where we live, then we need to change our message and its audience. The message should be, “Keep learning, keep adapting, keep innovating,” and the audience for that message needs to be business owners, not consumers.
Local media should still celebrate local business culture. Municipalities should still offer financial and infrastructural incentives to businesses—encouraging both local startups and organizations that are expanding or relocating. All of us who love our community should market the heck out of where we live and why we love it. We just need to save the charity for nonprofits and give our neighbors reasons why shopping local or shopping small is the no-brainer option that’s best for them.
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Primary image acquired from this source. Images on this page are screen captures of the Shop Small brand’s Twitter and Instagram media.
