stop shopping at wal-mart

Pokomoke City, MD. Today a pregnant mom and her two children are to be laid to rest after having been struck and killed while crossing US Route 13 to go shopping.

I guess that there are a wide variety of costs associated with saving money. The “huge box” stores seem to always be located in high traffic areas such as along busy highways. In the days before saving a nickel to buy products from China, she’d have walked down the street to the store. Today, those stores are mostly closed and all that remains are the survivors of the retail wars were size equates to buying power and market share.

Shop local.

It wasn’t always like this. It doesn’t always have to be this way.

There once were local and regional retail stores. In my hometown of Greenville, Michigan there where a hand-full of local and regional stores, including:

• Vaughns – Upscale men’s and ladies apparel. I remember they had wooden floors and large ceiling fans.
• McClennan’s – an actual “dime store”
• JC Penney – They had a basement where the tropical fish were kept. In the winter, this is where they put they “Christmas Land” toy section.
• Gamble’s – Sold outdoor equipment such as bicycles and mowers.

Our local big box retailer was “Meijer’s”, and we have no one to blame as Fred Meijer was from Greenville. Sometime around 1970 the new Meijer Thrify Acres was built on the corner of Van Diense and Main Street and it didn’t take long before they sucked out all of the business from the smaller local retailers.

I don’t really blame Meijer’s or Wal-Mart for that matter. They sold us stuff at lower prices. Plus, they sold us stuff that wasn’nt available at the other stores.

It is incumbent upon us individually to stop shopping at these huge-box stores. If you don’t like what huge-box stores have done to America – stop shopping there. Give your retail business to locally owned retailers (and locally owned restaurants for that matter) and see what a difference we can make.

It wasn’t always like this. It doesn’t always have to be this way.