Wednesday, August 22, 2018

Is It REALLY That Difficult To Keep Our Independent Businesses Around?

This is hard to post, and last night it was tough to read and digest the article "As a decades-old school supply store shuts down, local owners say they're facing shifts in retail, education". If I'm seeing is simply failure on the part of the schools to make one extra step to purchase locally, that's a huge problem. When did it get so hard to make the effort to spend in our own communities? Why is it always too hard to make the extra effort - to take one more step and keep a local business in place? (photo via WRAL.com)

Backstory from Raleigh, NC from WRAL.com: "After decades of serving local teachers, parents and schools, Stone's Education & Toys will close down by the end of September." The current owners, Carol and David Madison, who bought the store 13 years ago, posted this on their Facebook page, also put out as a post via Snap Retail on August 18th here.


We know times are tough for retail and we know that fewer and fewer people each year want to get out and set foot IN a store. And each year, as they turn a blind eye to their neighborhood streets, empty buildings and vacant windows, another one or two independents are lost. The decisions which could have been the difference between staying in business and the death of a mom and pop icon were not impossible solutions, however such efforts were not made.


From the article: Wake County, for instance, has 115 elementary schools, Madison said. Since January, Stone's has received orders from less than 20 of them though she continues to have a steady stream of business from individual teachers, parents and grandparents. "The parents and teachers that shop here are wonderful," she said. "They've been our biggest supporters. But the schools don't. They just do what's easy and buy online." According to Heather Lawing, senior communications administrator for Wake County Public School System, public procurement law does not allow the school system to prefer any business over another business - even if it's local. For purchases of less than $2,500, schools can buy required items from any business, she wrote in an email.


NOTE: If one third of the schools put in an annual $2000 order with Stone's Education & Toys that would be $76,000 each year of business. Enough perhaps, to have kept them in business - business which they have conducted since the 1940's. I'm just a tiny voice on the internet sharing some thoughts about small business, character of the mom and pop shops, and my feelings on the loss of local. But you can't tell me this doesn't matter to our society, people and communities. Wake up, people. You are not going to like what lies ahead.



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