The Longmont Small Business Association is kicking off a buy local campaign. The usual benefits are trumpeted - local businesses keep their dollars in town and variations on that theme. I support the concept and feel some group in town should get out that message, but it misses the positive impacts of larger employers in town, the obvious desire by the marketplace for the consistency/pricing/offerings of franchises and chains, and the fact that mom& pops rarely make the huge donations to local charities that a national corporation does.
What prompted me to comment on this was my difficulty finding any studies supporting the veracity of such efforts. It makes sense at first glance - and has a feel good message to boot - to champion locally owned businesses. It just appears any long-range analysis of the premise's impact on a community's economic vitality is lacking.
I shop local when I get better service, or very consciously to avoid patronizing certain stores for philosophical reasons. My choices feel good to me, but I don't know if in aggregate they create a better economy for my town. Plus if my town doesn't have what I need, I go next door. Until we have $15/gallon gas, that will always happen.
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If the LSBA doesn't do campaigns like this they'll lose membership. Remember, the LSBA is just another small business trying to stay afloat.
Similar to the Chambers of Commerce with their feel good initiaves.
But, let's name some good local businesses in EastBoCo. Excluding restaurants and liquor stores, that's hard to do.
And, I don't mean the local dry cleaners. They have no national competitor. And, we can't include the antique stores either.
Most consumers spend their money on food, gas, clothing, home furnishings, and home upkeep.
So, let's name the local grocers, local clothing stores, local furniture stores, or local hardware stores in EastBoCo.
I'm guessing this will be a short list.
Dan,
Of course the LSBA has to please its membership and give it a try. And anything for a small business for which a few hundred bucks of advertising is a big deal, this is helpful. Here in town, we have the barbershops, flooring, appliance store, florists, print and copy shops, etc.
There is another aspect to the shop local here in Lafayette because of the demographics of the city, with half the city west of 287. It is just as easy to go to the King Soopers in Louisville as Lafayette. The same with Walgreens, Burger Wurger, Chilis, Subway, 7-11s, Conocos, etc. The chains pop up every 5 miles. Even some day a Lowes (though Lowes wants half the town to still go to Louisville - their words, not mine.)
Perhaps getting city folks to the west to travel east is worth a try, or drive north instead of south or west too.
The big guys have the bucks to advertise, the little guys are hard pressed to do the same.
Dok- Isn't the point just to keep the tax revenue local? Not to shop only locally owned businesses. I understand that the majority of our money spent at larger establishments go somewhere else (CA, TX, NY...?) But these places also employ local people who spend locally.
I guess in a perfect world, people would live, work, and spend locally, but we are nowhere near a perfect world. My definition of local, also does not respect political boundaries. I don't mind helping out Louisville, Longmont, or Broomfield, if I can't get what I need closer to home. I certainly wouldn't drive 10 miles to save money at WM, but others might.
It would be fun to list some local owned east county businesses, I can think of very few that would even come close to competing with a WM or Lowes. There are a few gems, though: Lafayette FLorist, Vitamin Cottage is CO based, Crawdaddy Toys, Cutting Edge Sports, Anspach's Jewelery, that cool train shop in Louisville, 2 imaging/graphics shops on Public Road, numerous carpenters, plumbers, electricians. I try to find as many of these locally as possible, just to save myself headaches, but I hope it helps my community also.
Nice point, Cyclo, about keeping the tax dollars local.
But, I don't see Longmont leaking as many tax dollars (%wise) as the southeast BoCo cities. Longmont doesn't have immediate neighbors who suck those dollars away, and it has many major retailers in town.
That leads me to believe the LSBA shop local campaign is to enccourage shopping at small local businesses (their members).
The small, local businesses Kerry and Cyclo listed are all great. I shop at some.
But, most of my purchases are for groceries, for gas, and for home maintenance/improvement, as well as clothes. I have little choice for these purchases other than major national retailers.
I was at Ace Hardware yesterday. The clerk worked with me for nearly half an hour trying to solve my problem. To no avail. He recommended McGuckin's, not HD or Lowe's. I don't normally give any tax money to the Evil Empire to our west, but on his advice I drove all the way to McGuckin's and found what I needed.
Having been a small retailer at one time, I prefer to give my business to small guys, if they offer what I'm looking for.
Beyond that, I shop where it's most convenient, regardless of jurisdiction. I think most consumers fall into this category.
I would guess off the top of my head that the larger employers - outside of school districts and hospitals - in any community are non-local companies. So their profits go outside the town to shareholders or wherever. But a distinction must be made between retail and non-retail non-local companies.
Non-retail employers who sell more than 50% of their prodcut/service outside of the community are known loosely as primary employers. Such employers have been the focus of Longmont's economic development strategy under John Cody for years.
Through such companies, a community has hundreds if not thousands of people employed, who then have some level of discretionary income to spend wherever.
Retail non-local companies - let's pick on WalMart, for example - may take a bunch of profits out and have other unsavory issues, but they can offer the massive price breaks and aggregate sales tax that a community needs.
I would argue any town that wants clean water and paved roads needs a certain critical mass of such non-local retailers to keep the whole system flowing.
On balance I bet the primary employers provide more income through wages to be spent in a town that then keeps mom & pops in business when locals go shopping.
Perhaps the greatest scoop a community can pull is to have its residents work in a nearby town with all the primary employers, get a paycheck, and then come home to the seducing "shop local" message. If it weren't for the traffic, it would be the perfect scheme! Now I wonder where we could see that in play... Oh, duh.
Funny.
The lack of primary employers in Louisville/Lafayette/Erie should be concerning to local politicos.
Primary employers can provide a substantial property tax base, as well as contributing to sales/use tax.
Not to mention as gas gets ever more expensive, more people will want to live close to where they work. Could this spell decline for towns with no primary employers?
Longmont needs to aggressively fill that empty commercial real estate. The college educated left with the tech bust. The change was rapid and stunning. I buy off the internet to save 8.2% in taxes, in addition to the better deals. This pays for shipping and still saves me a ton of money. To be honest, Wallmart treats their employees better than the 5 and dime owned by a local slavemaster.
That's a great point, Dan. Are there any plans or incentives to bring Primary employers to Lafayette? There is a lot of room for development in the Lafayette Tech Center and over along 120th.
As an aside, I've noticed a few products that are listed as "Boulder" companies, but are actually produced out of Lafayette over near 120th(I guess they mean BoCo). One is Blue Moose of Boulder. They produce great salsa and dips. The other was 2 Moms in the Raw, a raw food kitchen, that will be moving to Boulder. Maybe there is a niche market in Lafayette to produce these types of products inexpensively. What could be done to keep companies like this in Lafayette and encourage others to start businesses like this?
The city offered a major incentive to Abacus to bring it to town. The Lafayette Tech Center was tied up for years as its owner filed Chapter 11. However now much of that has been sold to a new developer.
Lafayette for years has had more folks working outside the city then in it, especially for the higher paid jobs. But there weren't a lot of places to shop in town. The east side industrial parks are growing too.
But bottomline, the city will be running as fast as it can to stay in the same place financially. Add W*M, Target, Lowes, etc. and it is not clear revenue will equal expense along the way.
Cities are similar in a major way to private business. They want more revenue.
DB, you are exactly right about Primary Employers, and we are. As Kerry mentioned, we went after Abacus for that reason. For those of you not up on lingo, primary employers provide jobs that are somewhat immune to local and even regional economic cycles because they provide goods and services that are sold nationally and even internationally.
Boulder just discovered PE's and I believe was looking to allocate a huge amount of money to attract them.
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