I never read it in a book,
I never saw it on a show,
but I heard it in the alley
on a weird radio.
If you want a drink of water,
you got to get it from a well,
if you want to get to heaven
you got to raise a little hell......
----Steve Cash and John Dillon
Ozark Mountain Daredevils, 1973
To me, this song has always been about wanting something enough to fight for it. It urges us to be vocal about things we care about, maybe make a stir about what you think is important. Thirty-seven years ago, in 1973, kids all over the world learned to be vocal about things they cared about and people started taking notice. Things changed because so many young people demanded it. Opinions were challenged and mind-
sets were changed forever.
As I've said before, time is a circle and what goes around, comes around . People are again starting to stand up for their core values, especially when it comes to issues like affordable medical insurance and state policies on immigration. People are also becoming more aware about their neighborhoods and local communities, keeping tabs on and working towards their area's fiscal health. Of course, in this time of financial uncertainty, it's more important than ever to know where your community is headed.
There were a few things that spurred me to write this blog post. First was the fact that sales have been down this past month at the store pretty dramatically. April is traditionally a slow month because of tax time, but I attribute it to more than that. Economic issues, certainly, but intertwined with that, I've heard, is a general uncertainty about what's going on at Webster's. If the store were more communicative about all the changes, i.e., if someone other than I talked about it, perhaps the situation would be better understood.. Until that happens, it leaves Scott, myself and the rest of our crew as the de facto mouthpiece of not just our store, but Webster's in its entirety. I wish I could give you the answers you want to hear, but I can only tell you that we're all committed to making WFS the best it can be.
Another thing was Altadenablog's posting of
this article about Don Thomas' return to Altadena Hardware. Reading the comments, I noticed a common theme - uncertainty about what was happening there. Also stated more than once in the comments was a thing I've heard repeatedly since we took over the old stationery department - that the inventory is not as complete as it once was. I had to leave a comment about that, which you can read at the link above, but I'll paraphrase it simply here. If patronage drops off, when people stop coming to the store (our store, or any store) because of an ownership change or a change in the economy, that means that the store is not making the money it once did. Yet the store is still responsible for paying its employees, the taxes and if it can, the rent. If there's enough left over, it's invested in inventory. If you don't buy, we can't buy, it's as simple as that....we independent retailers don't have a huge corporation backing us, the way the big-box stores do. Speaking of big box stores, Greg Sweet, one of the commenters on the thread on Altadenablog I've linked above, posted this
fabulous cartoon video from JibJab. Thanks, Greg, for sharing this funny yet truly sad commentary on this fact of American life.....one I think we can change with some education.
That leads almost perfectly into the third thing that inspired this post. We had a customer in today, a young man looking at a Moleskine notebook. The price of the notebook is $21.99. He asks
crewmember Sean Fitz Gerald if we "match prices", which left Sean a bit nonplussed. I walked over and asked if I could help, and the young gentleman tells me that he could buy this particular specialty notebook off the Internet for $9.00, and could I match that price. He wants to support local businesses, he said, but it's hard when things are priced higher than big-box stores or the Internet. Where does that extra $10.00 go, he asked....in my pocket? No, I had to tell him, it certainly doesn't go in my pocket. Right now, all money received for purchases is going toward paying our employees, keeping our taxes paid and refreshing our core inventory of home office products. Well, he says, I thought I'd give you the opportunity to earn my business, but I see that you won't work with me. This young man has now put me in the position where I feel like a highway robber and that I need to justify my prices....even though I know that our margins are deliberately kept to a moderate level.
It's like there's some sort of unwritten law against having your customers familiar with the way retail sales operate. I say, the more informed you are, the better! If we in the retail industry were more forthcoming about how we price things, how we buy and what the requirements for retail buying are, we'd have more savvy customers who choose where they shop and recognize what value truly means. That Moleskine notebook the gentleman asked about cost me about $9.00 to buy....it's also what he wanted me to sell it to him for. We don't have the customer volume to make it worthwhile to sell things below margin, let alone make no money on it at all. We do run specials, I told him.....heck, I just spent the evening before handing out 20% off coupons! Join us on our Facebook Fan page and take adavantage of the promotions there. Become a regular customer and I might be more amenable to working something out But whatever you do, please realize the value of shopping locally! Spending your dollars at independent businesses is what keeps the wheels of your town turning! My employees go out and buy things from other local businesses. The store buys goods and services from other local businesses, we contribute to our local charities and so on and so on and so on....do you see what I mean? Now multiply that by the number of independent businesses in your area and you'll see that the amount is substantial. What if the majority of people in the community shopped locally? The results would be staggering! You can actually see how it works at
The 3/50 Project and
The American Independent Business Alliance. I urge you to take the time to educate yourself....your community will thank you.
Economic recovery won't really kick in until we jump-start it from the bottom up. Meaning, help won't come from the top and trickle down, it needs to happen at the lowest rung of the demographic totem pole.... in your local community....and spread upward! Until people realize that spending a few dollars more in locally owned businesses, where the money actually works for the town and isn't sent out of state or even out of the country, we'll continue to face hardship. I know that some folks out there truly don't care about things like this. Like the young man I spoke with, they don't want to be educated, they just want what they want. He wanted that notebook at $9.00 and was frustrated that I wouldn't "deal" with him. When I explained that buying off the Internet gives nothing back to his community, he just shrugged. I'm not going to reach everyone, but that's okay. I'm not trying to reach out to those who don't want to learn, I'm trying to reach out to people who do. I'm trying to reach out to you! It's time to raise a little hell, don't you think?
Have a great week, my friends!
Lori & Scott
