From an earlier post, it got me thinking about ‘shopping local’ which gets plenty of lip service and everybody hears repeatedly how it’s a good idea. Yet, somehow, it’s quite difficult what with parking and not having stock and needing actual cash and a bag and, and, and…
So, in that we are all happily killing off our High Streets whilst complaining our High Streets are dying, is there anything that you will deliberately get from a true sole trader rather than actually get from somewhere cheaper or more convenient?
For me I have three obvious examples, an old school record shop, a tiny little bike shop with a current stock of about 10 bikes and a butcher that is further away than the supermarket and a pain in the proverbials for parking.
The record shop is an obvious indulgence in that you could spend a lifetime downloading and have access to plenty of music that way. But, I prefer to pay a little more, browse using their human algorithms and get a chance to bump into other people with eclectic taste I may not have considered. In fact, the music is an odd one because you don’t really have to ‘buy’ music or tv or film at all anymore. My nipper has just watched all 8 series (so around 100 episodes) of Supernatural without paying a penny. I use youtube and twitter to discover stuff, then go to an old fashioned shop and buy what I want in my little collection!
A local bike shop vs Halfords doesn’t really need explaining. I went in recently with a dead bike and he persuaded me a few replacement parts was a better investment on what was basically a good but old bike, rather than buying a new bike. I don’t imagine Argos online has a similar approach.
The butcher, well, I was in school with him. But going there involves doing the slow drive of doom looking for street parking. But once parked, look! Actual people I know that I can talk to, a bit like a supermarket but outdoors and the people are alive not catatonic.
Rather smugly, I like to think that my way employs a shop assistant, a bike nut and a butcher. The alternative employs an Amazon warehouse drone, a postman and makes somebody somewhere very rich.