Thank you for visiting our website. I can thank you because you are here. Whether you’ve checked our directory, calendar of events, or visited this blog, we appreciate your interest and hope you’ve continued to discover plenty of useful content in every visit. But within the wide-ranging reach “Buy,” “Act,” and “Think” are a number of ideas and suggestions to better drive your individual actions, improve your choices, and bring our statewide independent business community ever closer together. We strive to do our very best.

If you were able to attend any of our events this year, you could see first-hand the efforts of our tiny staff supported by an army of local-minded volunteers. The enthusiasm surrounding our mission definitely propels our efforts and inspires hope for more events with greater geographical diversity in the future.

Despite tough economic times, Utah remains a top-tier state in which to do business and our universities continue to rank the highest for the creation of startup companies. Entrepreneurship thrives. But our locally owned businesses continue to feel the pressure of competition from big boxes. Whether or not we are emerging from recession, consumers are constantly faced with some important decisions when it comes to spending their hard-earned money. Granted, The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis said that “In October 2011, real disposable personal income increased 0.3 percent.” So that’s cool.

But the choice remains as to where to spend that disposable income. 

Through these winter months, let’s remember to check with our friends, to check the Local First partner directory, and to look for options that support our community and strengthen our local economy first. That can mean dispatching with the “convenience” of “one-stop shopping” (that studies have shown lure consumers into purchasing more than what they intended to begin with) and planning a shopping list and efficient route that supports local businesses. For holiday shopping, a good plan can not only limit total gas consumption, it can save the hapless wandering around department store in search of some random present.

Dozens of our partners stepped forward during Local First week to offer discount coupons for our friends and followers of Local First. There was great media coverage of the event and some solid exposure for independent businesses throughout the state. In fact, notes Local First’s Marketing Assistant Kristen Lavelett, “We achieved hefty statewide reach from our little South Salt Lake Office by employing the power of the internet.” The Gift Shift Coupon was a great opportunity to patronize an independent business and receive the benefit of some exclusive discounts. Just for thinking locally.

Moving forward, we encourage you keep those enthusiastic business owners in mind for all your needs, whether making purchases for yourself or as gifts. They love talking about their businesses which are their passions, and they love sharing ideas about other ways to make local choices.

Stay tuned for some more locally tuned dialogue and, I hope, some fantastic gift ideas.

--Andrew Dash Gillman

PART 1:

The Wall Street Journal posted in October, 2010, that the relentlessness of the economic downturn was keeping small business owners from being able to hire new people and spur economic growth. There is nothing about that statement that doesn’t make sense, but its repercussions seem to be far reaching:  “small businesses, known for jump-starting economies, aren’t upholding their reputation…the forerunners in hiring and growth [they are] the harbingers of recovery.” The economics of such an equation are, well, better left to economists, but is it fair to claim that small business aren’t “upholding their reputation”?

The immediate answer is yes. The Journal doesn’t criticize small businesses for failing to do their part. Small businesses cannot be expected to shoulder the burden of the national economy. Or can they?

The article quotes Stephen P.A. Brown, who is the director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at UNLV, who notes that “‘Consumer income just isn’t back yet.’” Consumer confidence, in other words, is relying upon the presence of jobs. But Brown says something more compelling: “‘A lot of small businesses have direct [contact] with consumers.’” Brown’s point strikes the core of the Local First movement, but gets no further attention in the article, which focuses on data and economics.

There is something not measureable about Brown’s notion, like the hypothetical “util” unit of measurement that accounts for the economically immeasurable aspects of utility and satisfaction gained from the acquisition of goods. All that is quite tangible but not quite quantitative about the experience of shopping locally is the emotional core of Local First Utah. The mission is simple in that Local First seeks to strengthen communities and local economies by promoting, preserving, and protecting local, independently owned businesses throughout Utah.

While that mission is measurable economically in the percentage of money spent that stays in the local community, it is also measurable in neighborhood vitality, including access to goods supplied by local business owners or the opposite: vacant storefronts once inhabited by friends and neighbors.

Thursday, January 6, 2011. Says The Wall Street Journal on small business: “The Future is Brighter in 2011, but Problems Linger.”

Neat.

Sarah E. Needleman, Emily Maltby, and Angus Loten reported that increased consumer spending and an improved credit market may bolster small business, but likely only the healthiest among them. That is a “marginal” improvement, at best, but the increased confidence may at the very least allow merchants to slightly raise prices from the rock-bottom points established in the valley of recession to try and lure in consumers.

That trend proved true in January throughout the United States, but not in Utah, according to The Salt Lake Tribune from February 18—at least for the time. That trend should change in Utah if gas prices increase as expected, along with the increase in price of food and raw materials.

Of course, wages have remained low and a corresponding increase in unemployment claims nationwide are not encouraging signs, even in Utah where jobless claims have actually decreased in one of the few states that still has a funded unemployment coffer.

Whew.

It’s a lot to process. With luck, some of it can be worked out in Part 2 of this discussion.

PART 2:

What on earth is anyone, whether an individual or a struggling small business to do with this information?

On the one hand, Utah has proven resilient, and bucked some of the trends that have devastated other states’ economies. Maybe it’s our pioneer heritage and entrepreneurial spirit, but (notable and tragic exceptions notwithstanding) business owners have hung on in desperate times. On the other hand, no one is exempt, and that is how an individual can actually take action. While the big boxes do offer access to relatively cheap consumer goods, everyone has to ask himself or herself whether or not we need all these goods. To be sure, the layouts of these stores are designed to lure consumers in walking out with more they intended, but they also are completely vacant of any emotional resonance, replacing knowledgeable, passionate individuals with a vested interest in the goods with oversized, yellow smiley faces.

Local First Utah is about encouraging and empowering individuals to take as much of their business and buying power to the people who care about their products and their customers. It’s about feeling confident walking away from a conversation with a business owner. It’s about real community.

An economist once argued that Sam Walton created more jobs than any other American entrepreneur in history. Unfortunately, he may well have been right. But it seems to have come at the expense of a skilled American labor force, and a manufacturing industry exported oversees, the gradual process of which has worsened our country’s dependence upon fossil fuels and promulgated the artifice of the American dream through unnecessary access to consumer goods through free trade that protects America’s interests at the expense of other countries.

Alas, the best we can do, in many instances, is support the local purveyor of global goods. That’s okay! We can’t just severe the supply line, but if the goods are already made out of the country, why send the profits out of state? Happily, in many other instances, truly local choices can be made. That is the light at the end of the tunnel, and a light that is getting increasingly brighter. Some of the related questions left unanswered herein, as well as best practices for acting on behalf of the preservation of our cultural vitality will be addressed in this blog moving forward.

There is a lot of gloom and despair hanging over this rant. But small business in Utah, a direct bloodline of the state’s pioneer heritage, has always been supported by hope and joy, the fuel of the human spirit. In every exchange there is choice. Local First Utah reveals the choices that can be made locally, and in doing so preserves the independent spirit of our industrious state.

Author: Andrew Dash Gillman