In case I have not posted enough about Flint, let me tell you I was in Flint last week. Placemakers from around the country assembled in what came out to be a graduate degree in how to get up and be awesome after getting beat down.
The folks I met were geniuses. Most came from different areas. Carmen Mays from Birmingham, Najeema Iman from Detroit and the host, Tony Vu from Flint joined me with our moderator Madeleine Spencer from Santa Ana in an incredibly enlightening conversation that I will try to sum up in a few paragraphs so it’s not TL;DR
That means “too long; didn’t read” and it just so happens that sometimes I write too long. When that happens, or when you’re just had enough of my musings about the same topics (Bitcoin, small businesses, urban economics, architecture), just hit the unsubscribe link and you’ll be excused.
So. Back to the story. Flint was the birthplace of the Auto industry. Not Detroit, Flint. General Motors started there. It has a history of entrepreneurship that came with a very interesting ecosystem.
Industry always brings with it an ecosystem. Hardware stores open when people see the opportunity of selling tools to folks working on building cars, for example. The jobs that come with the emerging car factories bring families and those families build houses, so our hardware store grows.
As factories become more complex, they outsource some of their components, so other, smaller factories, foundries, manufacturing plants open nearby and need tools, so our store grows even more.
More people means more mouths to be fed. Markets, restaurants, taverns and other food and beverage establishments arrive and that opens up an opportunity for local bakers, to supply bread and pastries, and other prepared items that require supplies that, in turn, make sense for other shops to offer. There are dozens of other ancillary businesses that I don’t even imagine but are or will be there.
That is, in a nutshell, what I talk about when I say “ecosystem”. Four little factories making cars move the economy in ways that no planner can foresee. That is why most planning fails, incidentally.
But we’re here to talk about how the new economy is the old economy. Local shops are closing at alarming rates. Bookstores are being ravaged by Amazon. Hardware stores are being killed by Home Depot and, alas, Amazon. Main Street has too many vacancies.
Yes, but. There is always a but. Not all shops are closing. Not all bookstores are ravaged. Not all hardware stores are dying. Although Main Street does have too many vacancies. Look at the ones that are open. Old and new, look at the common features of those that remain and thrive even in the current economy.
Those are the ones that found a niche that Amazon can’t occupy. The business of Amazon is logistic and its core is financial. The business of a hardware store is service and its core is location. Amazon may have reviews of tools and may recommend the best buys, but a neighborhood hardware store owner performs a personalized service that Amazon can’t.
Same with the Bookstore. The personalization and unique offer of events, classes, publishing and design that the book industry relies on cannot be provided by Amazon.
There is another common service that all local shops offer. The service of community building, of looking at the “triple bottom line” of business, community and neighborhood. If all three are healthy, the business will thrive and the ecosystem around it will grow in vitality as well.
That is the old economy. That is how little towns like Flint were able to bear a future behemoth. That is how small villages like Chicago in the 1810s became a trading powerhouse. Or how a recently incorporated city like Los Angeles in the 1920s was able to grow the film industry by attracting economic refugees. Fun fact: those guys were fleeing from the monopolistic practices of Thomas Edison’s moving film company in New Jersey. But let’s leave that story for next time.
The new economy will grow from contexts similar to those of old. Where free agents are allowed to make individual decisions and find and seize opportunities, the complexity of local markets will create jobs and prosperity. As I put it in my book, The Ten No-B.S. Rules For Successful Storefront Design:
Local businesses used to be about quality, trust and community. Finding a niche and being the best at it will allow you to offer those values once more and make a good living out of it.
Stores with a mission, vision and staged as theaters of the shopping experience are succeeding because they offer more than just products.
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The market shift towards local, small stores brings a new type of experience that is, in fact, more sustainable, creates many more jobs per square foot than stores with large footprints and generates more revenue per acre for business owners and cities.
The Millennial generation is embracing a different kind of retail culture. Store owners don’t just sit behind a counter but are critical parts of the supply chain.
It is now common to know your suppliers on a first name basis and take genuine interest in their trades and in their families.
In short: small businesses that will thrive are those that keep the retail component to a minimum and become community builders and service providers first.
I wrote in a Proud Places article about how shopping local is slowly becoming a thing for the wealthy. I stand by those words but also think the current high price point is part of the process of having to go through the pain of losing conventional retail practices to online shopping, small businesses finding themselves and their voice again, and implementing new retail practices that build up on the familiar, close, vested ones of the old economy.