Walk down any street or go on social media and you’ll see the signs in the windows our read the words.
Support local. Shop small. Keep it in the community.
We say it to each other too and we say it to shoppers every chance we get.
It doesn’t work. It never has. I think a lot of us know that and keep doing it anyway, because it feels like we’re doing something.
The problem is what “support local” actually asks. It asks the customer to do you a favour. It puts your need in the middle of it, not theirs. Shop here because I need you to, because if you don’t I might not make it. Nobody wakes up wanting to prop up a struggling business. They wake up wanting a good card, a gift that works, a quick errand done well. You’re asking them to pay in guilt, and people don’t like paying in guilt.
It’s worse than just useless I think. It quietly tells the shopper you might be in trouble. It casts you as the underdog who needs a hand. That’s not a reason to come in. If anything it’s a reason to wonder how long you’ll be around. Are you looking for a pity party?
What does pull people in? The boring answer, and the true one. Being good at it.
Have the thing they actually came for. Know their name, and remember what they bought last time. Be quick when they’re in a rush and happy to chat when they’re not. Make the place a pleasure to walk into instead of a duty. People go back to shops that are good to them. They don’t go back out of pity. The few who come in once because they felt they should don’t come a second time.
Give them a reason that’s about them, not you. A range that’s worth the trip. Staff who know their stock cold. A shop that feels like a place rather than just a spot to hand over money. Do that and you never have to ask anyone to support local. They shop with you because you’re the better option, and they tell their mates, because people talk about a shop they love and nobody talks about a charity case they helped out.
Now the bit we don’t say out loud.
Plenty of the retailers shouting loudest about supporting local don’t do it themselves. Coffee from the drive-through chain. Printing ordered online because it was a few dollars cheaper. The weekly shop at one of the big two. Shopfittings, uniforms, the lot, bought from whoever came up first in a search, none of it from anyone nearby.
Walk into some of these shops and ask where they bank, where they buy their own gear, where they had lunch. The answer tells you the whole story. They want a loyalty they won’t hand over themselves.
Customers pick up on that. Maybe not in words, but they feel it. A shopkeeper who actually lives the line is convincing without a poster, because the whole shop runs on it. One who preaches it on the door and breaks it everywhere else is just another sign in a window.
So before you print the next poster, have a look at your own card statement. If you want a town where people choose the independent option, be that customer first. Spend up and down your own street. Use the local tradie, the local supplier, the cafe round the corner. Not out of guilt. Because it’s the world you keep saying you want, and you can’t ask anyone else to build it while your own money’s going somewhere else.
Be worth shopping at, and back the others having a go at the same thing. That’s the only version of supporting local I’ve ever seen actually work.