Shift The Way You Shop

Arizona is about to embark on an experiment to see if it can replicate the findings of an economic study in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
As the study by Civic Economics has proved, if all of the households in Tucson alone shifted 10% of our existing purchases from non-local businesses to Local Independents (locally owned and independent businesses) we would see thousands of new jobs created and millions of dollars of new economic activity. And all this can begin to happen as soon as people start shifting and without the use of one taxpayer dollar.
On October 1, 2010 Local First Arizona will launch a campaign called Shift Arizona with a press conference at Maynard's Market at 10 am.
After this, it is up to the citizens of Tucson and the entire state of Arizona to choose to spend a portion of their budget at local businesses. Individuals can make a pledge and see the impact of their shift at the new website, ShiftArizona.com.
Get out there Tucsonans and Shift! There is a friendly county by county competition already underway with Springerville in Apache County leading the state in percentage of residents pledging to shift. Crazy, huh?! Watch the competition unfold here.

Another (Local) Shopping Excursion

The other day I realized my household is down to 3 of the set of 6 wine glasses I bought last year at one of those big-box housewares retailers. I said perhaps I'd plan a trip there soon as we were in need of flatware as well.
Blessed be my finance who said, let's go to Table Talk. This is a locally owned housewares store. I kind of gave him a hard time about how much more we'd have to spend to get the same quantity. Also, I kind of like buying cheapo wine glasses because I am clumsy. Anyway, I knew he was right, that we should at least go to Table Talk. And, I knew it would be a much more enjoyable shopping excursion.
The local store did not disappoint. Firstly, the service was great from a warm greeting and offering of coffee to the demo on how to use my new knife sharpener.
Next we found a great sale on cookware sets. We debated the virtues of each and thought about our needs. In the end we realized buying a set wasn't necessary, since we only really need 2 or 3 pieces. So, we bought one small frying pan to try out and left the store with our needs satisfied and our pocketbooks none the worse for wear. We made a commitment to pop in there from time to time to build our new kitchenware collection bit by bit. In this way, we end up with great products at good prices that will last and we feel good knowing a lot more of our hard earned money stays in our immediate community.

My Impact with One Purchase

I have been thinking a lot about this factoid that Local First-type organizations speak about: approximately 45 cents of every dollar spent at the locally-owned business stays in the local economy vs. 13 cents spent at a national chain business.
I recently purchased a pair of shoes from my favorite indie shoe store. I could have easily bought the same shoe at a department store or--heaven-forbid--online. But, not only do I appreciate the friendliness of this businesses, the sales people are knowledgeable and spend the time you need with you. I tried on a few styles and hemmed and hawed as I tried to decide between two pair. In the end I choose my new $100 sandals in brown.
It is very convenient that my purchase was nearly exactly $100. That means $6.10 went to the state capital and $2.00 went to city hall to fund basic services. And, according to the statistics mentioned above $45 of my purchase stayed in my community through paid wages and purchased office supplies, marketing and advertising dollars, etc. If I had bought the same shoe at a big box shoe seller only $13 would have stayed in the local economy. That's $33 lost.
There are 600,000 people in my community. Let's say half of those make a $100 purchase of shoes, clothes, or electronics a month. If 300,000 people make that $100 purchase at a big box store my community loses $9.9M per month! Is that correct? Whoa, what an impact one person can make!
For those who have a penchant for online shopping, try keeping those tax dollars in the state. Unless, of course, you want to have to put out your own fires and haul your own trash to the dump. If 300,000 people in Tucson redirect $100 of online shopping a month to stores in town (preferably locally-owned stores) we'd keep $600,000 in the city coffers and over $1.8M in state coffers in just sales tax revenue. Per month. Over a 12-month period, that is well, a lot of money. My figures are conservative. All it takes is less than half of the population of Tucson to spend $100 a month at a local business instead of a big-box or worse an online store to keep the economy humming.
In a state with relatively low property and income taxes, we really need our sales taxes to fund basic services such as police and fire departments.
Let's not give the state more per dollar of our hard earned money, let's just keep it local people!