It's Your Town Now......

 

 It's Your Town

I used to go out quite a lot,
chase to chase and shot to shot.                                     
I'm all done with that somehow,
and it's your town now.

These days the mighty eagle sings,
of money and material things,
and the almighty Dow,
and it's your town now,
your town now,
it's--

From the mountains to the plains
all the towns are wrapped in chains,
and the little that the law allows,
and it's your town now,
it's your town now,
it's--

Where are the young bands gonna play?
Where're the old beatniks gonna stay,
and not before some corporation bow?
and it's your town now,
it's your town now,
it's--

So be careful everyone,
Cops can get careless with their guns.
And then they slip off somehow,
and it's your town now,
it's your town now,
it's--

You young ones it's up to you
to fight the fight and I hope you do,
Oh I see in your eyes that you know how
and it's your town now
your town now.

Don't let 'em take the whole damn deal,
Don't give up on what you really feel.
Ah, the small and local must survive somehow,
if it's gonna be your town now.
Is it gonna be your town now?
Is it gonna be your town now?
Is it gonna be?
----Greg Brown

My mother taught me long, long ago to not say anything at all if I had nothing nice to say.  So, I put myself on a two week blogging exile.  I've been so overwhelmed with the negative that I was afraid to put pen to paper....ummm....keyboard to screen....oh heck, you know what I mean.  But I'm overjoyed to be back with a more positive outlook, and, hopefully, I can convey what I have to say without being overly dark and depressing.

In this week's post, I'd like to talk about this article in the Washington Monthly, written by Barry C. Lynn and Lina Khan, and its relevance to the song captioned above.  In the article they describe the fact that American entrepreneurship has fallen off precipitously in recent years, and opine the reason for that drop.  Here's a sample, actually the final paragraph of the article:

"Indeed, the decline of small business documented here appears to confirm that the great social experiment undertaken a generation ago—when we allowed our government to cease enforcement of our antimonopoly laws—has had a devastating effect not only on our democracy but also on the ability of ordinary Americans to build their assets and move up the socioeconomic ladder through enterprise. The loss of job creation that comes with the hollowing out of America’s entrepreneurial sector also goes a long way toward explaining why American businesses were creating fewer and fewer jobs even before the Great Recession hit. The founding generation was right: as America’s entrepreneurs go, so goes America’s prosperity and democracy. If we are ever to recapture the promise of this land, we must first break down the great powers that crush the individual citizen’s initiative and ability to create and build what is new and better."

We need our entrepreneurial sector to be able to create more and better jobs.  Without that, we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.  Or some would say, between RiteAid and Walmart.  I'd like you to re-read the words to the song that opens this post.  Is this what we want for our town?  Some would have you believe that yes, this is what we want.  I, and a growing number of people whom I speak with daily are saying NO.  No to the large corporations, no to the chains, no to dead-end jobs that go nowhere.  It doesn't matter if you're reading this and don't live in Altadena.  Something like this can, and probably has, happened where you live.  There's a radical push to open more and more big-box "urban" model stores that are local-washed to fit in your community, but really are just a wolf in sheep's clothing.  Now is the time to say no, not in our neighborhood, not in our town!


Our locally-owned, independent businesses and our local start-ups need your support now more than ever before.  Be a part of the change in your community and start a movement to bring your local businesses to the attention of its residents.  Webster's Fine Stationers is proud to have started such a movement here in Altadena by investing in other local businesses.  We also love that we feature businesses other than ours in our social media campaigns. If you're asking what you can do in your neck of the woods, here are some suggestions.  Start an independent business alliance if you're a small business owner or, if you don't have the funds to do that, ask your Chamber of Commerce.  Do they have a Independent Merchants Committee?  If they don't, suggest they form one and volunteer to be on it.  If you're a concerned citizen, start a cash mob for your local businesses.  We've done this in Altadena and it's working out very well.  Petition your City or Town Councils to keep chain businesses out and to help foster independently owned small business ventures.  The more active we are in our communities, the better we all get along and it's a good feeling to know that we're working toward sustainability, local self reliance and autonomy.

Without the support of the communities across the nation, our independent businesses will be eaten alive by the encroachment of huge corporations.  With no local businesses, a community will wither - property values decrease, individuality lost and nothing left to differentiate it from any other.  Is that what we want?  Is that your town now?

For our local readers, see SaveAltadena.com on the net and SaveAltadena on Facebook for news, meeting times and other information.

Talk to you next week, friends, and until then, be well and happy.

Lori and Scott

Home Sweet Home

There are several people in my group of friends on Facebook sharing articles about the economy and how it's affecting middle America. There's a common theme to all, and that is how people are saving more and spending less than they have in decades. That folks are staying close to home and are enjoying more time with their families.

In that vein, I took this evening to be close to my family. All day at the store, I felt this almost overwhelming homesickness. I started posting pictures on my personal Facebook page....a pretty sunset from the backyard taken over three years ago, a section of my garden that I was very fond of, some flowers in our kitchen and a shot of the living room. If I hadn't made myself stop, I probably would've posted my entire Photobucket album and everyone would've thought I'd lost it!

So I called my daughter and told her to bring the roommate and come over for dinner. Scott and I stopped at Heidar Baba, a Persian place across from PCC, and brought home steaming heaps of Basmati rice topped with luscious chelo kabab - koobideh and bagh (ground meat & filet). Accompanying the kabob were roasted tomatoes & peppers, crunchy tadig with a fenugreek and kidney bean stew, yogurt with cucumbers and mint and pita bread. It was delicious! We sat around the table, ate, talked and laughed. We bathed our dog, Pepe, and washed the car. We did the familiar, every Sunday family thing and it was good.

Wish comforting times like tonight were more common, but I'll take what I can get when I can get it. Hope your Sunday was just as warm and fuzzy as ours was....

Have a wonderful week ahead, my friends!

Lori & Scott

The 3/50 Project Makes National News!

After my last post, here's some great news to report: The 3/50 Project has gotten national coverage from no less than The Wall Street Journal! See the article at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124631541083270621.html

If you're not familiar with The 3/50 Project, it's a grassroots organization founded by retail speaker/motivator Cinda Baxter, of Minneapolis, MN. Its premise is pick three brick and mortar businesses you'd hate to see go out of business and spend an affordable $50.00 a month at them.

Webster's Fine Stationers has been supporting Cinda and The 3/50 Project since its inception. We continue to hand out fliers about it and have them affixed to our doors. We want to congratulate Cinda and The 3/50 Project for this coup, and we will stay on course educating people about how important it is to shop locally. It would be wonderful if newpapers in Southern California would write about this, too....we need all the exposure we can get!

I highly recommend your reading The Wall Street Journal article. In it, it shows how the Project is helping retailers all across the country weather this recession. It actually helps you, too, as it helps to strengthen your local economy when you support local businesses. The more support a local retail store has, the more resources they're able to draw from to offer better merchandise and prices. They can keep the local people who work there employed and productive and if enough support is given, perhaps even give them a raise (a miracle in this economy!).

What this article does is give us hope, so thank you, Cinda, and thank you to all our supporters! We love you and want to assure you that we will fight hard to be here for you. We also want to take this opportunity to assure you that Webster's Fine Stationers will scour the markets to bring you the finest, most unique, ecologically responsible and prefferably locally made merchandise we can find at reasonable prices. A tall order, I know, but we're committed to this ideal. We've just gotten in new decorative paper (for invitations, craft projects, announcements, etc.) from The Green Paper Company. All the paper is recycled, but they contain from 30% to 100% post-consumer waste, depending on the design, and that's fabulous! Plus, the paper is made right here in the United States.

Again, congratulations to The 3/50 Project! Now it's on to the Today Show!

The Times, They Are a-Changin'......

Those of us of a certain age will remember Bob Dylan's iconic lyrics to this song, which I'll copy here:

"Come gather 'round wherever you roam,
And admit that the waters around you have grown,
And accept it that soon you'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you is worth saving,
Then you better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone,
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come writers and critics who prophetize with your pen,
And keep your eyes wide the chance won't come again.
And don't speak too soon for the wheel's still in spin,
And there's no tellin' who that it's naming.
For the loser now will be later to win,
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come senators, congressmen please heed the call,
Don't stand in the doorway, don't block up the hall,
For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled,
There's a battle outside and it's ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls,
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come mothers and fathers throughout the land,
And don't citicize what you don't understand,
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command,
Your old road is rapidly fading.
Please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand,
For the times they are a-changin'.

The line it is drawn and the curse it is cast,
The slow one now will later be fast,
As the present now will later be past,
The order is rapidly fading.
And the first one now will later be last,
For the times they are a-changin'.

These lyrics, written in the l960's, are more relevant today than ever, in a variety of ways. You could apply them to our country's current economic situation and our new presidential administration's efforts to combat it. You could also apply these lyrics to the state of big business in the nation today. Narrowing that down, you could apply these lyrics to small, independent businesses, and that includes Webster's Fine Stationers.

Let's break this down and look at each facet, starting with the country's changing economic climate. "Transparency in government" is what President Obama espouses, and the large companies and corporations in the U.S. had better change their ways or there will be consequences, as we're beginning to see.

The large chain stores and big boxes are having to scramble now to hold onto their market share, and many of them are failing to do so. We've seen the demise of big box stores such as Circuit City, Linens & Things, ZGallerie, Bombay Stores and Cost Plus World Market. The latest to fall is Expo Design Centers, a division of Home Depot. According to USA Today's Jayne O'Donnell and Sandra Block, "the National Retail Federation said retail sales are expected to drop 0.5% this year, the fist annual decline since the NRF started tracking sales in 1995."

"Most consumer behavior we saw in '08 will continue well into this year", says Rosalind Wells, NRF's chief economist. "Shoppers will be seeking value and trading down to discount and off-price retailers in order to stretch their dollars."

Even though spending is expected to increase in late 2009, no one's predicting a return to the frivolous shopping patterns from earlier this decade. Now, when consumers spend, they're paying attention to what they buy and this shift toward more cautious spending is likely to last.

USA Today cites the downturn as the main reason for the dreary retail sales, but there are other factors at work here. Many have realized that it's not necessary to buy new vehicles or furniture every few years, unless the car dies or the springs give out on the couch. Carol Steidtmann, Deloitte Research's chief economist for consumer business said the spending slowdown was predictable. After a spending boom like the one that occurred after the September 11th terrorist attacks, he said, "you always see a return to simplicity".

To compete in this environment, retailers need to get back to their roots, says Janet Hoffman, a global retail managing partner of a large retail outfit. That means "knowing their customers and coming up with a unique offer or product, price, or in some cases, service", she says.

Emphasizing local ownership is one way to stand out in a crowd. This is particularly important to small stores like Webster's, who've been active in their communities for years. A survey of independent retailers in a wide range of categories found that sales fell an average of 5% in December, vs. a decline of 8.9 for retail sales overall, according to the Institute of Self-Reliance, a non-profit research organization. Retailers in cities that sponsored a "buy independent/local" campaign reported an average decline of only 3.2%.

Consumers who patronize local businesses instead of big box stores are "realizing that cheaper is not the same as value", says Jeff Milchen, co-founder of the American Independent Business Alliance.

This is exactly where Webster's Fine Stationers can fit into your shopping matrix. We're local, we're independent, we're unique and you won't find better customer care in the area. Stop in today and see just how WFS can take care of you and your home shopping needs. Mention this blogpost to any one of our staff and you'll enjoy 10% off our everyday low prices. To encourage dialog on this blog, our cutomers who leave a comment are entitled to a free gift! When you're next at WFS, claim your comment to one of our staff members. After a quick verification, we'll give you a little something for your trouble. We'd love to see more active participation here because we want to know what you think.

In the near future, WFS plans to start hosting in-shop instruction on how to make your decorating budget stretch by using multi-function, reused, reclaimed and re-purposed items. There's no need to spend hundreds of dollars accomplishing something that you could easily do for pennies on the dollar. We'll talk about that in more depth in a later post, but I want you to be assured that WFS is trying to find the newest, most exciting merchandise that works within your budget. Times are tough, we know.....but sometimes it's just soul-satisfying to buy yourself a little something that doesn't break the bank. Come see us and let us show you what we can do for you!

THE MEANING OF "THINK GLOBAL, BUY LOCAL"

We hear this phrase quite often these days, but does anyone really stop and think about its significance? Does the average shopper in Altadena really understand how supporting your local independent businesses helps support the entire community? I suspect they don’t, as I sit here looking at my store which is devoid of any customers. One of my new year’s resolutions was to promise myself that I’d start writing blog posts with more relevant content on how our store and the Webster’s shopping complex as a whole is interconnected with our community’s economic future. This is the first step in this undertaking and I sincerely hope that these posts will help foster some new ideas. I’ve started this post several times and erased everything because it sounded so stiff. Just be yourself, Lori, I thought, and speak from your heart, so here goes.

Before Scott and I took over Webster’s Fine Stationers, I was an avid shopper. I love to shop, to window browse, to look to see what’s new. I’m a decorator, so I love bringing something nice home for the house, for Scott or for me but I never really stopped and thought about where I shopped. Pier One’s got some table linens at ½ off? I’m there with bells on and wallet out! Pottery Barn’s got a glass cloche (bell jar) for $49.99? Ka-ching, it’s mine, as are Z Gallerie’s huge apothecary jars. I never stopped to think that I maybe could’ve gotten any of these items from a local independent retailer. Why is that? We are so conditioned to the advertisements and catalogs sent from these huge chains, these corporate stores, these big-boxes, that we forget about the little guys. We are so intent on saving a few bucks that we will spend almost that entire savings in gas driving to the chain retailer of choice, never realizing the impact this has on our local enconomy. It took the ownership of an independent retail store and educating myself about these things for me to realize what's happening....I'd like to share this with you so you'll be aware, too.

So what happens when you patronize only these types of chain stores? Ok, let’s explain it is way….only about 1/3 of your dollar stays in your community when you buy from one of them. “We often assume that the dramatic growth of chains is solely the result of consumer choices, when in fact government has a hand in this trend. Over the last decade, cities and towns have spent billions of dollars subsidizing the development of big-box stores and shopping centers. Tax policies in many states are riddled with loopholes that allow large retailers to duck their tax obligations, while small businesses are left to shoulder their full share,” says Stacy Mitchell, researcher and author, recently quoted in the trade publication “On Point”.

She goes on to talk about “buy local” campaigns throughout the country and comments, “What makes these campaigns effective? Part of the answer is that they are not simply empty marketing slogans. They draw on a growing body of research. Some of the most compelling has to do with the added economic benefit of locally-owned businesses. Several studies have found that a dollar spent at an independent business generates more economic activity and supports more jobs in the community than a dollar spent at a chain. The primary reason is that local businesses buy more goods and services, like banking and accounting, from other local businesses.” She goes on to state, “A study in Grand Rapids, Mich., by the firm Civic Economics found that, if residents redirected just 10 percent of their total spending from chains to locally-owned businesses, the result would be $140 million in new economic activity for the region, including 1,600 new jobs and $53 million in additional payroll.”

That’s pretty deep, isn’t it? Ms. Mitchell’s article says, “Studies have also found that cities that have lots of locally-owned businesses score better on a variety of measures of community well-being. They have lower poverty rates, greater civic participation, and more charitable giving. In addition, local businesses generally have a much smaller environmental impact and place less demand on public infrastructure and services than big-box stores.” Whoa…this is huge! Think about this for a minute and how it relates to Altadena. Wouldn’t it be great to have lower poverty rates, greater civic participation and more charitable giving here? Judging from the low response to our several attempts to raise funds for two local Altadena charities, I’d say so.

The thing is, we can all do something about this. We can shop local and keep our money local, where it counts the most. Most big-box stores have their headquarters in different states, or even out of the country. Staples is headquartered out of state, as is Office Max and WalMart. Target has good community programs going, I’ll give them that, but again, they’re headquartered out of state. Trader Joe’s? Headquartered in Germany. So you see, it’s really hard to find a retailer who is actually a resident of your community……or is it? Let’s see, according to Ms. Mitchell’s article, “Both anecdotal reports from business owners and empirical evidence indicate that (buy local) initiatives are having a significant impact on people’s choices.”

“In Bellingham, Wash., a market research firm found that nearly 60 percent of residents are patronizing locally-owned businesses more often thanks to a campaign that encourages people to “Think Local First”. The campaign was launched in 2003 by Sustainable Connections, a coalition of more than 500 locally-owned businesses. Normally, if 1 in 5 households claim familiarity with your program, and change their behavior because of it you would consider it a success”, said Dr. Pamela Jull of Applied Research Northwest. “To have nearly 3 in 5 households attributing a behavior change in this program shows an amazing impact”.

Let’s see how “buy local” programs have done in areas around the country. Says Ms. Mitchell, “Last year, thanks in large part to the work of Arizona Local First, an alliance of more than 900 independent businesses, the state passed a law outlawing subsidies for big-box stores and shopping centers in the Phoenix metro.”

“In New Mexico, the Santa Fe Independent Business and Community Alliance, a six-year-old coalition of more than 600 local businesses, helped advance a bill to close a tax loophole that gives chains, but not local businesses, a major break. Opposed by big business, the bill had stalled in committee for years. But that changed, said the bills’s sponsor, Rep. Peter Wirth, when independent business owners spoke up”.

“Local business alliances are also influencing how city officials think about economic development. The Austin (Texas) Independent Business Alliance, which has nearly 400 members, has run a highly visible campaign urging residents to “Celebrate their Independents” and “Break the Chain Habit”. The message has resonated with city officials, who have stepped up small business training programs, designated several “Independent Business Investment Zones” around the city, and decreed that a major downtown redevelopment project lease at least 30 percent of its retail space to locally-owned businesses. The developer ultimately rented 70 percent of the storefronts to locals”. Hello….think about what such an alliance would’ve meant to the hotly debated West Altadena shopping district! We are asleep at the wheel, people.

“With the national economy in trouble, local business alliances have become more crucial now than ever, not only in helping independent businesses survive, but in offering a path out of this mess and toward a more durable economic model in which business is once again firmly rooted in the community”.

I know this is getting long, but it’s something that needs to be said. If the current atmosphere prevails in Altadena, Webster’s, who has been serving our community for upwards of 84 years and on its way to becoming an historical landmark, will be history. The jobs that help support many local people would be gone, the property redeveloped into condos or the like, and the tax revenue we pay the County of Los Angeles would evaporate. All the support we and other businesses around the area give to local charities would be no more and Altadena will wither. Dire predictions, yes, but there’s much we can do about it. Webster’s Fine Stationers has taken that first step, by joining Buy Local Pasadena, http://www.buylocalpasadena.org/ and by writing this blog post. Also check out their recent blogpost here: http://buylocalpasadena.wordpress.com/ - there’s some relevant information to read. Join us in our fight to improve the quality of life in our community….shop local, buy local and help keep Altadena the amazingly beautiful and prosperous town it's always been!