Shop local. Keep your dollars at home. Spend in the hood.
Flip through the pages of any small town newspaper or flyer, especially at Christmas, and you’ll see that message repeated by businesses, chambers of commerce, and municipal bodies.
Shop local has been the mantra for years, the message being that small town survival can only be achieved if disloyal, traitorous residents would just do their shopping at home.
But is “shop local” really the holy grail of economic success or is it an elaborate guilt trip?
How do you sell local to consumers who often have no choice but to go elsewhere for the items they need?
How do you argue with the appeal of online shopping, which grows in popularity and dollars spent every year?
If shop local was working, Virden wouldn’t have so many vacant shops. There wouldn’t be offices taking over retail spaces. Downtown Virden wouldn’t turn into a ghost town every Saturday.
Main Street Boost
In October, two representatives from the National Trust’s Main Street Boost program visited Virden to help identify opportunities for economic growth.
They toured the downtown, met with groups of citizens, and brainstormed ideas. They did a presentation showcasing ideas that other towns have tried and been successful with.
One idea not mentioned was advertising that browbeats citizens over where they spend their money.
After all, if everybody shopped local, Virden would lose customers from every small town in its retail catchment area who come here to shop.
Three ideas
Here are just three sensible ideas the Main Street Boost reps floated during their visit:
- Signage. We have a gorgeous, historic railway station that houses the tourism office, art gallery, and gift shop. Sadly, nobody passing by on the TransCanada Highway knows it’s there. As a member of the delegation pointed out, when you have a hidden treasure you have to guide travelers to it with a series of wayfinding signs. Inexpensive. Effective.
- Touch ups. A lick of paint. Removing eyesores. Adding benches and trees downtown. Tidying up back lanes and vacant lots. Fixing broken and boarded-up shop windows.
- More niche marketing. Very few retailers can compete with the prices and variety offered by big box and discount stores. Instead, merchants should offer something so unique that people will come from Brandon to get it. We already have some excellent local examples: a shoe store, dress shop, craft store, and thrift stores. Even with low oil prices, they thrive by offering unique products, personalized service, or both.
As branding specialist Mark True wrote, “Make a great brand experience that has nothing to do with your location. When you do that, people will seek you out, no matter where you are.”
The long-awaited report from Main Street Boost is expected to arrive very soon. Let’s hope it contains lots of fresh thinking combined with proven strategies that will excite our civic leaders and business community.
Let’s hope the report is shared with the public so we can all participate in the way forward.
