YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR

There was an article in our paper this week, proclaiming something on the order of "When the going gets tough, shop local!" It had nothing to do with the locavore movement. It was about supporting local businesses in an economic crisis. If you are like me, trying to make the pennies stretch as far as possible, your first thought is probably "Yeah, right - buy all my groceries at the local store, when I can get them in the city for a fraction of the cost." But, after I had time to mull it over a bit, I realized that those "savings" come at a price.

One question we should all be asking is, why is it that those big box stores can afford to sell their products for so much less than our local merchants? If you don't know the answer to this, then you need to watch this great little video, called The Story of Stuff (it deserves an oscar!).

Second, think about what happens when you spend your money in your local community, as opposed to leaving it with Mr. Big Box in the city, or Ms. Dot Com, on-line. You begin to cause those little "ripples" I've mentioned, don't you? As the money passes from one hand to another, it's saving local jobs, feeding local families, keeping local businesses afloat, giving you more local choices and helping to preserve everything unique about your little community - the very things that made you fall in love with it and want to move there.

Third, think about those things that an independent merchant has to offer you, that you just can't get from Big Box and Dot Com. For six years I worked at an unusual, independent garden center in Houston (pictured above). Time and time again I overheard customers telling our salespeople "I can get this same plant at Home Depot for a lot less," and that was true, they could. So why did those very same people keep coming back to shop in our store? Could it have been the excellent service they received there? Maybe they liked knowing that there would always be someone nearby to assist them and answer their questions. Perhaps it was the quality of our product. They had seen all the TLC that our plants received, while the one's at Big Box were pretty much ignored, then tossed in the trash when they started to look too bad (you can afford to do that when you only pay pennies per plant). Maybe they kept coming back because their gardening attempts were more successful when they shopped with us, since they weren't being sold plants that were inappropriate to the season and climate. Personally, I like to think they came to us for inspiration, since that was my job at the nursery. I hope that just wandering our pathways gave them so many ideas that they couldn't wait to get home and get started. How often has that happened to you at Big Box? I also knew of young moms from the neighborhood who took a daily walk around the place with one child in the stroller and another in a tummy pack, and who occasionally baked us cookies as a way of saying thank you. Can you do that at Dot Com? Isn't all this worth a few extra pennies?

Many of you have probably seen tee-shirts and bumper stickers sporting the logo "Keep Austin Weird", but have you ever leaned in close enough to read what's written below? If so, you know that it's actually a reminder to support local businesses, for they are what makes Austin unique. I am quite fond of that logo. I'm even more fond of the one pictured here, on the bumper of my own car, and I'd like to thank whoever wrote that newspaper article this week, for reminding me why I put it there in the first place.