A small town that kept Walmart out now faces Amazon
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
> I twice stopped by Wilson’s, the department store, to try to meet the manager, and saw no shoppers inside the store the entire time I was there. (Wilson’s did not respond to multiple interview requests for this story.)
With a switch in marketing Wilson's could become a destination store as going in feels truly like going back in time. It's a real department store with separate registers in each department staffed by folks who know about what they are selling. Wilson's still puts huge full page ads in the local paper but I've never seen a single online or social marketing message from them. If/when they go out of business it is going to put a huge hole in the fabric of downtown Greenfield.
"Buying local" is the kind of thing everyone is in favor of and no one actually does. Well, okay, not "no one," but far fewer than favor it in theory. Like "giving up Facebook," "switching to Linux" and "always using a condom," the number of people who make the claim in order to signal something about themselves is much smaller than the number actually engaging a behavior.
See further Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are ( https://www.amazon.com/Everybody-Lies-Internet-About-Really/... ).
In short, the whole book felt like he got great access to data, and poked around in it until something interesting popped up. Then overarching conclusions were drawn without significant effort to describe whether or not the data was representative.
My experience with shopping online in New Zealand is not like in the US. International shipping prices to NZ are typically insane and shipments take forever. Depending on the item, it’s usually cheaper and faster to just pick it up at the store.
The exception to that is of course online shopping from NZ-based retailers, but I only came across online shops for specific verticals, like computers (e.g. Newegg.com), Trademe (Craigslist), or simply a a brick and mortar shop that also delivers (same price as in store, plus delivery fee). Keep in mind, NZ has a population of something like 5 million people, so it’s harder to get economies of scale.
Furthermore, if you live in a rural area (I don’t know what the cutoff is) without a regular parcel service, you also have to pay an additional delivery fee through NZ Post. This looks like it’s at least $3.70, and maybe more for packages [1].
My point is that I think that the economic incensitves that cause Kiwis to shop locally are the same economic incentives that cause Americans to buy online. I don’t think it’s out of any heightened sense of altruism or local affiliation.
[1] https://www.nzpost.co.nz/tools/rate-finder/sending-nz/rural-...
Been using Ubuntu for close to 5 years now. I tried, I really tried to love it but the drivers are horribly outdated. Nvidia graphics broke everything in my Dell 9560. Even a fresh install of Ubuntu LTS is practically unusable. Each keystroke takes around 3 to 7 seconds to register. The screen lag is horrible. I tried fresh install and still everything looks pathetic compared to OSX or even Windows 10.
After Windows 10 got native Ubuntu 16, I just moved to it and though I have to run Linux startup services manually I am pretty satisfied with it.
We can't fight the inevitable just because of personal vendetta. Walmart was a small time store once. They got big because of the ease of use. Same with Amazon. To me it's just stupid to go out of the way to "buy local" when it's a losing game.
It’s not terrible, but taking all of my daily work into account, it’s still not feasible on the whole. And the problems are about the same as always. Hardware compatibility, arduous installations and config (yak shaving), and stuff just not working. And the pervasive pattern, inherited from open source itself, that things have recursive dependencies, each involving their own incredible journey of configuration and workarounds. Always the journey, never the destination of getting work done. In the end, I clean installed Windows, set it up to minimize annoyance, and got on with work.
I feel that, much like Blender, Linux requires a certain mindset. I suspect that mindset resembles either masochism or Stockholm Syndrome. I still have no complaints about MacOS.
But that’s a good analogy for this article. UNIX-like devices did eventually dominate the world, just not in the form factor we were expecting. I’m writing this on my pocketable UNIX device. You’ve probably heard of it; it’s called an iPhone. If one adds up all the devices in the world, Microsoft only owns a fraction of all of the operating systems installed.[1] Like the store keepers in this article, Microsoft failed to adapt but continued to rely on an increasingly failing business model (desktops). There will still be a place for Windows in 20 years but it will be a niche product like macOS is today. Unless they quickly adapt.
I certainly prefer to Amazon something than go to a store. This story is one of struggling to protect a failing business model. Were I one of those business owners I would spend all of my (increasingly) free time learning to either sell online or tweak my service so that it’s so compelling that people would willingly dress, drive out, risk crowds, and pay more. I would get online (hah!) and find the world’s best retailers, find out what they’re doing, and emulate their success.
There are still buggy whip manufacturers[2] but they learned what was needed to adapt. Adapt or get run over.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_sys...
It's an equal nightmare to develop on windows and deploy on Linux. But it's true. I have Linux systems running for couple of years with no downtime at all.
"And the pervasive pattern, inherited from open source itself, that things have recursive dependencies, each involving their own incredible journey of configuration and workarounds."
You get software from repos. Your system figures out the dependencies for you I literally have no idea where you could possibly be coming from.
"Hardware compatibility"
Buy compatible hardware.
"arduous installations"
Don't know what you are talking about. Given well supported hardware installation is incredibly easy and has been for over a decade.
" feel that, much like Blender, Linux requires a certain mindset. I suspect that mindset resembles either masochism or Stockholm Syndrome. I still have no complaints about MacOS."
You accept that MacOS doesn't run on just any hardware, buy hardware from a vendor who sell you MacOS preinstalled on supported hardware and experience no issues. Can I propose that you would have similar lack of issues with a vendor who sells prepackaged linux solutions?
Linux is bad in some ways but you are mostly kinda bad at linux. People installing hackintoshes seem to exist in a world that is fraught with pitfalls and workarounds but nobody expects MacOS to work out of the box on whatever. Linux by virtue of actually working on 99% of machines catches flack for only working optimally on 80%.
To boot you wonder why apple who has received thousands of dollars from you works better than a product which you provide zero support for. Its super likely that if you and others who wanted open source solutions to work for them had spent 15 years giving open source software 10% of the support provided to closed source solutions you might have something closer to what you want.
A lot of people have hardware and aren't looking to buy something shiny and new just to use Linux.
It's an immediate no-go for me to recommend anyone Linux when their machine is not support out of the box (sans nvidia blob, some people insist on it)
Free software development time is finite and information on some hardware is notably absent.
If you desire better support pool money to pay for improvements to particular hardware. Anything else is hoping people are willing to expend their resources for free so that you don't have to.
In the meantime I'm guessing most people intend to eventually buy a new machine. Upgrade time is a great time to think about trying Linux. Instead of
Linux it will run on whatever terrible machine you got on sale at Walmart with a Vista certified sticker.
Think instead...
Make your next computer a Linux machine.
Outside of hardware primarly used under Linux, you won't have much luck paying any vendor money to improve that situation. You'll have to suck it up and make it work anyway by patching the kernel.
>Linux it will run on whatever terrible machine you got on sale at Walmart with a Vista certified sticker.
Vista? I have upgraded people to Linux with 98 stickers and earlier. These people won't buy new machines, the current machine will have to work.
There won't be a "next computer" for some of them.
Use the right tool for the job, avoid assuming you need the most expensive tool possible!
Even then, most people don't buy with "it must run linux" in mind, they grab whatever has good sounding numbers on it.
There is nothing about linux that would imply screen lag or keystrokes its pretty clear that something was clearly broken with your gpu driver. For example using software rendering rather than your gpu. Possibly something that could have been corrected by using drivers that aren't "horribly outdated" which are certainly available.
You didn't happen to think all the people using linux are just dealing with keysstrokes that take seconds to show up and pretending its normal did you?
This last time, I put Windows 10 and WAMP on the server and was amazed. I was tweaking products after a couple of hours. Things like ssl certificate, smtp/pop3 server, remote desktop all installed and worked with no arduous arcane CLI commands or hours spent researching tasks required.
Bonus: Robust antivirus and easy backups with a simple DOS script run from the task scheduler.
With only one buyer a week and 250 unique daily visitors, I don't need the speed of LAMP for my estore.
Ubuntu is worst linux distro.
Edit: As for condoms, I think the situation is a little different. They ruin sex compared to going without a condom, marketing from Trojan be damned. I'm not trying to endorse the mindset, but there are many people who are primarily just trying to avoid getting someone/themselves pregnant so if someone's on the pill that's good enough for them.
$50 a day at a brick-and-mortar location? That sounds unsustainable, I wonder why even bother keeping it open? Does it help his branding/online reputation?
Well, in some cases, there is always money laundering to consider. Many physical retail locations with seemingly no customers in shady areas exist for nefarious reasons (not claiming its the case here, of course).
(1) An article about an Independent Bike Vendor that shifted its business model to an Independent Bike Services. They make their money primarily from servicing bikes, making recommendations. Releasing pressure from having to make their most revenue from selling bikes allows them to make the best recommendation for the biker. Bikers who buy direct from manufacturers will still want an expert to service their bikes.
(2) An article about Nike and some of the major brands shifting to a different business model where in-store shops are no longer distribution channels but rather marketing channels. These shops provide an in-person experience. They are paid by the overall revenue for the brand rather than what gets sold through the store. This aligns the incentive structure to what consumers are now doing: trying them on in a local store and then buying them online.
Where do small business owners fall into this? I don't know. Bikers and commuters tend to have a lot of attachment and affection for their bikes, and are willing to pay for services. Clothing in a department store, perhaps, not so much. Books? Toys?
Now as small businesses all fall to e-commerce (often in part because their taxes were raised to compensate lowering residential property taxes) residents of small towns are finally coming to realize that all these services they've been provided actually cost money.
The problems in rural areas stem from lack of new job growth since 2008 implosion, and jobs with poor wages (and not enough of these even). Not gonna help people buy much online.
Logistics around literal access aren't the issue. It's the same old tune: financial access.
Putting a website up in place of a catalog doesn't solve that problem.
This is like saying that playing video games over the internet is nothing new, because hey, people already played games over distance in the form of chess by mail.
Yep, Sears catalog appeared in 1888.
1. Convenience. I used to stop at a local toy store on the way to a birthday party, or the day before, to buy a wrapped present. They closed, so now I drive ~15min each way to the next closest toy store.
2. How do I know what local stores have unless I go there and ask? I'd like an app that would allow me to comparison shop across Amazon/Target/Walmart/local stores. Let me know if you want to work on that with me, sounds interesting.
3. Add value - online reviews are sometimes useful, honest expert advice is great.
What the US calls "city planning" is a complete oxymoron.
Email Jeff!
Not having to interact with other humans beings is the best thing about online shopping.
That's often true of specialty stores, especially independent local ones. It's often not true of big chains and stores that don't have a narrow focus.
It's also often the case that they will steer you based on their knowledge of their sales incentive structure, which is often much better than their knowledge of product.
Out of the last 5 times I've gone into a store hoping to get some help and advice from an employee, I reckon 3/5 they have ignored me until I found what I was looking for, or concluded that they didn't have it and just left.
I've even put my hand up in the middle of a store, like I was in school, waiting for assistance because ther were so few employees around, or because after asking me if I needed help as I walked in the door, they lost interest in me, and decided to have a chat with their colleagues.
I probably wouldn't have helped you either, that seems like incredibly strange behavior.
Most of the time I find myself pulling my phone and googling the item in question to read about reviews.
The biggest issue with these sort of stories are that there are these Neo-Luddites who think that we can keep/make jobs in the face of online retailers killing many types of work. Giant corporations don't hire the same number of people that they used to, and the people they do hire don't tend to be low skill positions.
Retail is dying by inches, but it's dying. People can make "customer service" a rallying cry, but "customer convenience" seems to be the actual metric that matters. We're getting rid of these jobs, and too often we're either not replacing them or we're dealing with people who were in JOB X for 10+ years and are unwilling/unable to change to a new field.
I'm not saying any of this is "bad", just that "soft landing and help finding new work" is a cute dream, but not likely. This is what disruption does. It ruins the current paradigm.
I think the only avenue for some of these places is to make up for the loss of convenience with high margin, high quality products and services for those who care. But many of these smaller communities just don't have the populations to support many, if any, of these businesses.
But a goods distribution network may just be the paradigm that's being disrupted, and what may happen is a far more services oriented set of business, until that gets displaced by new innovations.
Ultimately, I think we have the population globally, and the needs to support most of us having fulfilling work. But it may just require a lot of creative relocation individually.
People with less disposable income have increasingly prioritized physical products over paying for any meaningful interaction with employees which is fine. It is their choice to do so. If people actually value having meaningful interactions on main street in small town America they will still have them. But I suspect that most people don't value that, which one could argue I suppose is bad, but it should ultimately be left up to the individuals that live in small town Vermont, not me.
I rely on a couple of small businesses near me, one of which is my butcher. One might say well the butcher is an unskilled job, but he is selling me two things. First is better meat than Whole Foods. Secondly he is quite a good cook so he can recommend cooking techniques or I can say "I want to do the brisket sous vide" and he will trim it so just the right amount of fat is on it. Obviously this works better with organic products rather than something made of plastic where everything in the same box is a perfect substitute.
Exactly. Don't make it hard for me to give you my money.
Home depot and Autozone aren't going to be killed by online retail because a large fraction of their customers need drain snakes and replacement car parts today, not two days from today.
'the free market' here is actually more like an oligopoly than a free market, yet is being legislated as if it is a free market.. that's the problem..
If oligopoly pricing is what happens, how come things are so awesome for consumers right now with these razor thin margins and low prices?
If it was an oligopoly we'd see high prices and the consumer being screwed. Do you think this is happening?
replace 'foreign market' with 'big box' and 'domestic' with 'small guy' and there you have it..
the 'consumer' here also can't realistically open up a factory to compete with any of the products being sold... and so is not really a full market participant
All I care about is the consumer. And consumers benefit when prices are low.
People keep predicting that price dumping will cause prices to rise later or something but those predictions have never come true.
IE, people keep saying that Walmart will do this, but how long have they been around? A long time, and prices are still low. Same with Amazon. Prices are still low.
How many decades from now will those inevitable price increases happen?
The actual agent of change here isn't really Amazon, it's the average consumer deciding that Amazon is better.
Gravity is also a constant and unrelenting force yet we still fly airplanes.
Are there things like airplanes that defy market forces in a controlled manner that can help small businesses?
Prices don't care about externalities. External consequences, not consequences per some sort of time window. Markets are actually often as good as can be expected at taking time into account at least as it may pertain to a particular good in question.
> Are there things like airplanes that defy market forces in a controlled manner
Markets exist because there are finite amounts of things, you can't really defy that. It would be nice if tradeoffs never needed to exist.
There are similar tradeoffs in markets -- the town here made one of those tradeoffs in excluding Walmart. They relegated their residents to buying from higher priced stores or driving further to shop at a big box store. And they (and I) were happy with that tradeoff.
The tradeoff they have available against e-commerce is higher local taxes on all goods purchased with subsidies from those taxes going back to brick and mortar locations. (You can't only tax mail order goods without violating the interstate commerce clause, as I understand it.)
no, you can't. everywhere people trade, there's a market. all you can do is raise the costs associated with legal markets, and deprive those engaging in trade of the rule of law.
take a look at the drug cartels for what happens when you try and legislate markets totally out of existence.
In the end, it's going to be Walmart or Amazon. Walmart will at least hire local people to staff the stores, and local stores might be able to survive as ultra-niche places that will carry all the oddball "long tail" stuff Walmart won't bother with. But if you don't let the population have a nearby store that has good prices, good customer service, and a good selection of the things the bulk of the population wants, they'll go online for it, they'll discover that Amazon actually does have everything (well, except for a Chromecast or a Nest), and the nearest fulfillment center will be too far away to hire anybody local (I say "will" rather than "may", because if they're keeping out Walmart, they'll keep out Amazon fulfillment centers too).
And let's not just talk about the selection and the prices. Let's talk about customer service. Big companies prioritize the bottom line, so the last thing they want to do is turn away customers or risk a black eye on social media that can spur a boycott. Small businesses tend to take an attitude of "I'll run my business my way, even if it hurts the bottom line!". Case in point: Macy's has fired multiple employees for telling trans women that they're not allowed to use the ladies' fitting rooms. They have a corporate policy of non-discrimination, and employees who break that policy get canned. Why? Because turning away customers is bad for business, and the last thing they want is for "boycott Macy's for transphobia" to trend on Twitter. A small businesses may very well take the attitude of "I'm not treating you freaks like women, so get out!", they're willing to lose the business for the sake of their principles, and they're not going to face much backlash in a conservative small town. Or you see all the cake bakers who refuse to bake for LGBT people; you won't see that kind of discrimination at Kroger. I am 100% fine with these small businesses going away. They actively make life worse for marginalized people like the LGBT community (I'm a lesbian trans woman myself), so I'll do whatever it takes to accelerate that process and replace them with bigcorps.
And let's not just talk about how small businesses are worse for the customer. Let's talk about how they treat their own employees. Laws requiring employers to provide insurance benefits to their employees don't kick in unless the employer is over a certain size. And it's precisely because of small businesses that the US doesn't have as many employee-friendly laws: it's the small businesses, not the big corporations, who are terrified of the government mandating that employers provide large amounts of vacation time or comprehensive health coverage. Big businesses are big enough to soak the cost; mom-and-pops aren't. And it's not just about benefits: think also what HR departments can do for you. If you work at Walmart, and your supervisor is sexually harassing you, you can file a complaint with HR. If you work at a local shop... your supervisor is probably the owner, so your choice is to either live with sexual harassment or find yourself unemployed. And there's evidence showing that the gender wage gap among pharmacists almost completely went away when pharmacies shifted away from mom-and-pops and towards big box stores that hire people to work shifts.
Whenever I hear stories like this, I think of a handful of strips from Something Positive back in 2004:
http://somethingpositive.net/sp09082004.shtml
http://somethingpositive.net/sp09092004.shtml
http://somethingpositive.net/sp09102004.shtml
Small businesses are strictly worse than megacorps, and they're finally getting what's coming to them.
As an employee, your employer’s HR department exists for the sole purpose of maximizing the net value that the employer can extract from you, the “human resource” being exploited by the company (and if that maximum turns negative, that can be rephrased as minimizing the net harm you can do to the company.)
If they happen to do something that actually benefits you, that's a side effect, not the main goal.
This is preposterous. A small business relies on all the good customer relationships and feedback it can possibly get, running it in a customer-hostile manner is a great way to go out of business. A social media cascade might cost a megacorp some lost profits; for a small business it could easily be your downfall.
>think also what HR departments can do for you
HR departments do NOT work for you; they work for the company. HR is not and will never be your friend. Megacorps don't magically make workplaces less toxic just because they have an HR department.
This is pretty unethical.
Using a local business as a showroom for an online business is unsustainable. If enough people do it, then the local business will cease to exist.
It's perfectly legal, and I don't particularly think it should be made illegal, but that doesn't make it ethical.
The local merchant has the advantage, but many of the small, local merchants around here seem to be content to pull a Leon Lett on the 1 yard line. [0]
"Sorry, our price is $XYZ [50% higher] and we don't price match."
"OK, fair enough. <tap, tap, tap>"
On the flip-side, Home Depot, BestBuy, and Target have generally competitive pricing to start and do price match online competitors, so they get a lot of my "need it now" business.
Either take the gamble and order online sight-unseen, or pay the higher price involved in maintaining floor space and inventory.
Is it impolite to bust out a phone right in front of a sales rep and say "hold on, let me check amazon", sure. But there's no moral responsibility on the customer's part to do business with anyone because "hey man, it's more expensive for me to run this business".
This isn't some surprise to retail. This has been going on for over a decade. You can't compete with the internet on price for (many) things. But you can compete on immediate availability, customer experience, etc. If you're fighting a price fight with the internet, gtfo of retail.
As I said, it's unethical to use a store as a showroom and then buy elsewhere. It's a simple concept, and I believe you're being intentionally obtuse and disingenuous in your reply.
Yes, this is inconvenient for the people who own those stores. No, the consumer isn't doing anything unethical.
But if people continue to behave the way that you're suggesting is okay, we'll end up with very few brick and mortar options and we'll have to rely entirely on sight-unseen information in our purchasing decisions.
Some stores are made to browse, and it's less of a problem to come in and not buy, but it's still a problem to explicitly come to browse to buy elsewhere.
I'm very grateful this is not the slightest bit true.
Personally, I'll support a local store even at the cost of a few dollars if it's a store I respect, such as an independent operator. Otherwise if it's just another corporation, I'll just go with the cheapest option available.
After I got over the shock, I handed everything in my hands (small stuff) to the manager and then went to Office Depot and bought my new Color Laser Printer there instead. They lost at least $600 in sales that day over that policy.
Why was I taking pictures? I saw a game that I thought my friend in Norway would like, and I was going to tell him about it.
It's a ridiculous policy.
The only thing I can imagine is if they're selling stuff with visible online registration codes. And I thought everyone stopped doing that years ago.
At any rate, it's either just a few Best Buys or they've never caught me doing it, or the employees just don't care, but I've taken pictures in Best Buy lots of times. Mostly to share laughs about their ridiculous HDMI cable prices (and other AV products) in the Magnolia AV area.