In a reversal of the folksy joke “you can’t get there from here,” local shoppers should take heed that when they drive south to patronize big box stores or click on virtual shopping carts at Amazon.com they are forever exporting dollars that will almost never return. In other words that’s money that “can’t get here from there.”
Because of the losses and economic disruptions of the recent wild fires and because many of our local businesses were already fearing a soft conclusion to their business year, this locally owned newspaper is once again offering its favorite shout-out: Shop Locally!
By now, most of our readers have memorized the math about the impacts of shopping locally and supporting local businesses that support local jobs, schools and local charities. Local shopping dollars are recirculated over and over between local businesses, deposited in local paychecks, circulated through local banks and passed around again while local sales taxes get collected, too.
A dollar spent at Amazon will never find its way back here. Besides making local cash registers ring, we’re talking about local sales taxes that pay for local police and fire personnel, parks, streets, lights and — oh yes — emergency disaster response.
Don’t think every single shopping dollar doesn’t matter. Our locally owned businesses operate on very tight margins and face enormous challenges and competition. The 10 cents of every shopping dollar that is predicted will be spent by Sonoma County shoppers at Amazon and other online sites this holiday season could mean the difference between a happy and a not so happy holiday for lots of local stores.
In better times, and in emergency times like these, local shopping dollars are a bedrock investment in our community. Besides jobs, our churches, food pantry, senior center, youth sports, art centers and civic clubs survive from the collective goodwill and capacity of our local businesses.
Healdsburg’s local businesses attracted $350 million in taxable sales in 2014 (the most recent totals available.) We maintain that not one of these local businesses is more important than the other. This is an “all in it together” proposition. We urge all our local businesses to work together, preferably through our chamber of commerce.
Local businesses must be proactive, join forces and advertise special holiday promotions and hometown spirit. (Guess who pays for Santa’s annual visit?)
Right now we’re all preoccupied with supporting the fire relief efforts, but we need to keep supporting one another, too.
Let’s not fool ourselves. Once upon a time almost all shopping was done locally. But those happy days of scrapbook memories are long past. These are the days of the internet where Amazon, Google and Facebook have monopolized a Big Brother digital marketplace. (They are even putting Sears and JC Penney out of business.) Even Santa Claus can’t do all his shopping in his own hometown at the North Pole anymore.
There’s plenty of local stores to buy Christmas toys, decorations, gift wine, a new favorite sweater or hat — or a thoughtful gift certificate to a popular local restaurant, spa or theater event. Don’t forget your local hardware store, grocer or bakery for that treasured screwdriver set, special snack or holiday pie.
You can’t get here from there, when there is a website at Amazon.com and here is the annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony. Here is where shoppers bump into friends and neighbors on busy holiday sidewalks and there is a place that’s a huge automated warehouse in the middle of Kansas or China. When too many of us shop somewhere else, it keeps getting more and more difficult to have a “here” we can claim as our own.
This will be a Christmas and holiday season we will all remember for many unwanted reasons. There are over 5,000 standing chimneys with no houses in Sonoma County. That’s 5,000 homes where there will be no Santa visits.
Talk about not being able to get here from there.
