Reason’s Hit & Run weblog had, as usual, some good commentary on the National Trust’s designation of all of Vermont as threatened by hordes of big box stores. That post led me to a Nick Gillespie article from 1995 that I vaguely remembered (and from which I probably subconsciously lifted the Bill Buckley reference). Read the whole thing, which shows how little the National Trust and anti-Wal-Marters have changed in 10 years. Nicks article also contained this nugget of a quote:
“We started seeing the demise of downtowns in the 1920s and ’30s, when cars started to become more popular. Basically, it began when people gained mobility,” says Kenneth Stone, an Iowa State University economics professor who has studied the impact of Wal-Mart on towns in the United States and Canada. “Especially after World War II, you started seeing people migrating out of cities and then shopping closer to where they lived. The advent of shopping malls in the ’50s and ’60s really took people out of the downtowns,” says Stone.
Recall that Wal-Mart, Kmart and Target all started in 1962, and didn’t enjoy real wide-spread success until well into the 1970s. Wal-Mart didn’t open its first store outside Arkansas until 1968, and entered its 10th state (Illinois) in 1978. This means that the demise of the old-fashioned downtown that the National Trust decries was well underway before the first “category-killer” stores opened in Rogers, Arkansas, Garden City, Michigan and Roseville, Minnesota. Big-box stores didn’t kill downtowns, although they gave consumers yet another option with which to hasten their demise.
The Reason article also demonstrated that small retailers are not doomed once a big-box competitor comes to town:
John L. Gann Jr., head of an Illinois-based consulting firm that assists older businesses, agrees with Stone. He says the anti-superstore activists are essentially local protectionists who would rather compete in a political forum than in a commercial one.Gann, who has worked with downtown areas in seven states in the industrial midwest and northeast, says that Wal-Mart and similar big retailers might put inefficient shopkeepers out of business, but the real problem is that many traditional, independent merchants aren’t providing the service, the hours, the parking, or the merchandise people want. “A lot of shoppers today prefer a large selection and chain stores with names and reputations they know,” says Gann.
And, despite claims that mega-stores are unstoppable “retail juggernauts,” Gann notes, “When Wal-Mart or whoever opens a store, they make an investment in their store, their merchandise, their personnel, and what have you. They don’t have one customer. Every customer they get, they have to win. And then they have to persuade people to keep coming back.”
So what’s an independent shopkeeper to do? Compete, of course:
I am skeptical of my experience so far, if only because it all too perfectly confirms the pro-superstore theory. A real estate agent, superstore workers, and customers–this is a self-selecting sample. Of course these people would like superstores. So after Home Depot, I drive down the road a mile to Curry Hardware, a small store squeezed into a corner lot so cramped that it’s tough getting in and out of the parking area. These people, I figure, should have a different take.But the three salesmen I talk with inside are having none of it. “You know, when Home Depot opened up, we were really worried,” says one. “They made us change our attitude. Now, we work to serve the customers better.”
I mention a banner hanging at Home Depot, one boasting “Nobody Beats Our Service.” “Yeah, right,” the salesman laughs. “They can’t compete with us on service.” Besides training the help to be more responsive to customer needs, he says, the owner opened up on Sundays for the first time and varied the store’s product line to stay competitive. “We get some customers who see us on the way to Home Depot, and we get some who get tired of Home Depot.” Overall, he says, sales are up, and his boss has even added employees.
Curry Hardware seems to be doing just fine - get your home improvement questions answered by the experts at Curry through the 1300 AM/Curry Hardware College of Home Improvement Knowledge. So it’s been clear for some time that independent retailers can coexist along Wal-Mart and Home Depot, been clear that consumers like the range of choices these retailers offer, and clear that the national Trust and its ilk are on the wrong side of history, so why do they persist in scare tactics and zero-sum economics?
