Local Effort to Spur Local Shopping

by Kirby Lindsay

This column originally appeared on August 10, 2005, published in the North Seattle Herald-Outlook.

I’m not one to recommend a web site. I love computers, and the World Wide Web (I’m an information junkie), but I’m surrounded – among friends and family – by computer illiterates.

I know that people prefer to pour over the flyers, brochures and pamphlets that lay strewn across counters by conscientious business owners here in Fremont. I’m just joking, of course.

I may not be the only person that regularly picks through these offerings, but I know they get overlooked in the hectic rush of modern life.

Buying Locally

I did recently stumble across a flier that I must recommend. It reads “Find It In Fremont” and advertises a website launch. Co-op Fremont published the card and a directory at www.finditinfremont.info

“Ho-hum,” I thought, until I read the “Ten Ways Buying Local Makes a Sustainable Difference” treaty on the back (and posted here with thanks to the North Seattle Herald-Outlook.)

I’m thrilled by the publication of such information – and their efforts to give the wonderful concepts more attention. (If you haven’t noticed yet, I’m a Fremont apologist and avid small business supporter. I shop locally and make many purchasing decisions based on what I can find nearby, and I’ll pay extra if it means walking two blocks instead of traveling 12 miles.)

I like paying my 5 bucks to a neighborhood bookstore. I know she prints her bookmarks a block away. I know she buys her espresso at the shop next door to my house.

“The money you spend in locally-owned stores re-circulates in the community for 2 to 3 times the economic impact of dollars spent at national retailers,” the flier states.

It is the #1 way local buying makes a difference – on the list and with me.

I agree with the list wholeheartedly, for nine out of ten. Number five gave me pause. “For every 2 jobs a national retailer brings to a community, 3 higher-wage jobs are lost due to local businesses closing.”

I can’t argue with it; I don’t have the statistics.

I do have Fremont experience with Fred Meyer (and Adobe Systems) who brought good jobs, with good benefits, and donations to our non-profits, while the Fremont business district continued to thrive.

More Economic Choices

I spoke at length with Viki Sonntag, project coordinator for Find It In Fremont, about the list – and #5. She holds a doctorate degree in economics and speaks very knowledgeably about the ten ways, and the structure of a sustainable, responsible business model.

“On a common sense level, everyone gets it,” she said, of buying local.

Where I’d feared to hear an attack on multi-national, bulk buying superstores, Viki described them to me as creatures of an unhealthy system, a system dependent on consumers’ willful ignorance, and participation. The stores help subsidize our consumption, and the responsibility to resist rests with us.

“We can create more economic choices by supporting local economies,” Viki explained. We have to choose to be part of the solution.

When a business gets large, communication between consumer and manufacturer breaks down. “The stories behind the products are lost,” Viki told me.

While a tag on a product at a large store might say if it is made in China, or Mexico, or even in the U.S.A., it can’t give details. Sue Sanem, at Portage Bay Goods, can get specific about the origins of her products – from Ugly dolls to motherboard coasters.

A Growing Economy

The Find It In Fremont website directory includes profiles on Fremont businesses, like Portage Bay. “Their values are important to them. They reflect their passions,” Viki explained, and the web site offers “a way to share them with the community.”

Coop Fremont hopes to give people information to empower them to make choices. They built the directory as a model and hope to see other communities replicate it, to someday have a Find It In Brier, Ballard or Burien.

“Economies are like gardens,” Viki instructs, “you’ve got to cultivate them.” They need water, fertilizer and a healthy environment in which to set down roots and grow. With the directory, Coop Fremont hopes to encourage a sustainable economy within Fremont.

With the postcard, and its arguments, I hope they enlighten all of us to more conscious and mindful consumption.