How To Save Our Independent Shops

@angela.chick for Just a Card

Most of us shop at big supermarkets with heavy hearts, so it pays to know tips to help support local indies, even if you don’t have many left, or find them expensive. Owners of indie shops can help by offering loyalty cards, free local foot/bicycle delivery and in-store events. It’s true that if you don’t use them, you lose them. So what can we collectively do to help stop the takeover by giant corporations?

How to Prevent Boring Clone Towns

A clone town is where nearly all the shops are the same. You could be near Land’s End or John O’Groats, and not know where you were. Aside from killing off local communities and shops, clone towns are frankly – boring.

Cambridge is England’s most cloned town, and Whitstable (a little seaside town in Kent) is the least, with over 90% of the shops being indie-owned. One local told Coast magazine ‘It’s a bit posh with lots of gifty little galleries, but it’s a bit scruffy too. But still a proper community’.

Twenty-First Century Syndrome: knowing a place so well, that you’re bored by the time you first visit. Paul Kingsnorth

In his book Real England, Paul travels around the country, seeing how community shops, pubs and orchards are disappearing under the sea of Tesco and shopping centres. The book is over 10 years old, but things are worse, not better. We have lost nearly all our indie shops, supermarkets are more powerful, and governments even promote Tesco and Amazon as ‘job creators’, where the truth is local indies offer proportionally more (and better) work opportunities. And the priceless pleasures of visiting a local greengrocer or hardware store are almost long-gone, as is browsing in an indie bookstore.

Next time you vote, ask your councillor or MP what he or she is doing to support local shops. In the Norfolk town of Sheringham (also in Paul’s book), there was a 13-year battle to stop Tesco building a supermarket over a locally-owned supermarket (funded by a local entrepreneur). Local councillors voted in Tesco instead. They give money to the community, but the town will never be the same again, and many small shops have now gone under.

Another problem with clone towns, is the harm they do to wildlife. Most of the big chains rip out ancient building facades and replace them with glass-fronted buildings and shopping centres. But our towns need less light pollution and glass buildings, to help prevent birds flying into windows and changed migration and breeding patterns (many birds now ‘wake up and sing’ in the middle of the night, as the floodlights and noises confuse them). Abroad, sea turtles are even heading towards brightly-lit shopping centres instead of the moon, to lay their eggs.

The COVID pandemic of course was a tragedy, but one surprising consequence was that many indie shops thrived, as people realised that they are not just ‘buildings with things in to buy’. Delivering food to vulnerable people created a community spirit, that caused over 6000 chain stores to close. A shame it took a disease that killed so many, to make the obvious – obvious.

In the US they invented a word called ‘shopping’. When one is learning English, one thinks it means to go buy things. But it just to go look at things, so you might eventually become interesting in buying. Of course later on, you realise what it really means is that people go to shopping malls to see people. Enrique Peñalosa

What Indies Offer (that supermarkets can’t)

@angela.chick for Just a Card

Indie shops often tire of promoting their shop, when they can’t compete on price. But what they can do, is offer many perks that the big supermarkets and chain stores can’t. Here are some free marketing tips!

1. People can usually walk or cycle to your shop
2. You can order things in for customers
3. You can allow well-mannered pooches!
4. People can leave things in your fridge
5. You can set up a tab for customers
6. You know your customers by name
7. You provide interesting & secure jobs
8. There is no self checkout!
9. There is no piped music!
10. You can offer free foot/bike delivery
11. You can phone customers, to update stock
12. You bring more money into the community
13. You support local farmers & artisans
14. Your shop sign is likely locally-made
15. You have lunch at the local cafe or pub
16. You stick around, when things get tough
17. You don’t wrap everything in plastic.
18. You can answer ‘product questions’

Ideas to Save Your Independent Shops

@angela.chick for Just a Card

1. Start small. A bag of organic carrots or a loaf of artisan bread makes all the difference. You then by default support the local signwriters who have lunch in the local pub etc. Big supermarkets tend to pay staff, then all other money (from management to produce) goes elsewhere.
2. Take a morning or afternoon to really explore where you live, to find hidden gems. Perhaps there is a little baker or deli or gift shop down an alley, or in the next village? Make a list of items you buy on a regular basis, then find out if there are local indie shops you could support. Go for quality over quantity. Nobody needs a bag of 12 dinner rolls, if you live alone or in a small household. Buy two good rolls from the baker! Find an ironmonger to buy one picture hook, instead of a whole plastic bag of them.
3. Benefit from discount cards for indie shops like Local Buyers Club (London) or Mustcard (South East). Vegans can also find cards to give discounts in indie health stores, which pay for themselves in weeks. Another way to save money is to amend your lifestyle (walking to shops saves petrol, and cooking real food means lower food bills).
4. Shopappy is an app where indie shops can list their goods online. Customers in 100 towns are already ordering goods this way, with home delivery or click-and-collect.
5. Set up an indie shop website like in Oxford or Cambridge (the latter has a free magazine, available in local shops throughout the city).
6. Run a local indie shop? Offer loyalty cards, rent the upstairs room to local book clubs or yoga class. Or band together with others and create a local blog about indie shops, with special offers.
7. A great idea from the US is a local coupon book. The Sunrise Guide is printed annually with lots of eco information and money-off vouchers for local green shops and services. It pays for itself within weeks, so the books sell themselves. Schools and non-profits sell them on sale or return, keeping 50% of profits.

How Local Shops – Keep Money Local

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Did you know the Prince’s Trust has roles for volunteers to ‘champion Tesco’ for the good they do for the community? Big supermarkets do give money to communities. But there is a ‘top-down’ approach here. ‘We will take your land, green belt, wildlife, traffic-free streets, local farmers, community spirit and kill off small shops. But in return – we will give you money to build skateboarding parks. And then we shall put up posters in our supermarkets, saying how we give millions to all of you, and say we ‘support the community’. Why not just support the community in the first place, and leave small shops intact?

Of course, sometimes the little guy wins! Tavistock (Devon) became the first town where McDonald’s had to shut up shop and leave, as they could not get enough business. This is a real ‘foodie’ town. One local said ‘We feed our children properly here, so they weren’t needed’. And Bourneville (Birmingham) became the first town where Tesco Express was refused an alcohol license, due to concerns over glass litter. This ‘dry’ town had been set up by Quaker Mr Cadbury (to stop his workers drinking gin!) Tesco fought the case. But Mr Cadbury had wrapped the deeds up in knots 100 years ago, so they lost!

Local Delivery from Local Shops

Often big chains boast of ‘local delivery’, but of course they are not really local. The food often is from a central distribution house, hundreds of miles away. Did you know that some pears and apples sit in fridges, for up to a year after picking? Use real local indie suppliers, and have ‘farm to fork’ within days, sometimes within hours!

1. Click it Local is like Deliveroo, but uses local suppliers to deliver, often by foot or bicycle. Foodstuff offers a similar service (for indie restaurants) in Cambridge and Bristol.
2. Apply for a free license to set up a Totally Locally town. The site is also working with councils to set up local websites, so people can shop at lots of indie stores on one website. Read their book The Economics of Being Nice, which looks at how this grassroots campaign to shop local has grown to a worldwide movement, with no budget, marketing or sponsorship. It has flourished purely on word of mouth, from good people sharing ideas, so others may benefit. The book also is a guide to the Totally Locally town, with inspirational stories from people who have been able to take back their high streets from big chains.
3. A good idea from the US is Postmates. The ‘Postmate’ receives an alert via app of someone wanting goods from shops, then earns a good income (and keeps all the tips) by fetching and delivering them by foot or bike. Many people earn a full-time income doing a nice job – exercise, fresh air, visiting local people and supporting indie shops.

Books to Save Your Indie Shop

Good Morning, Beautiful Business is a lovely story from a woman who was trying to save her row of Victorian brownstone houses in Philadelphia from demolition a couple of decades ago. So she set up in a tiny muffin shop. It  morphed into a 200-seater restaurant offering organic and sustainable food, which prevented the building being knocked down, and kicked off one of America’s first local foodie movements. Quite by accident, her little place blossomed into a regional hub for the community, and ended up changing economic policy nationwide.

Specialty Shop Retailing is by a successful indie gift shop owner (since 1975!) First published years ago, this is the  flagshop book for indie shops that is constantly updated to reflect growing trends like accessibility and online shopping. It covers shop design and stock, customer service, marketing, staff and preventing theft.

How to Set up a Simple Online Shop

Since COVID, many indie stores have retained or started up online shops, for extra income. It’s really easy to set up a gorgeous online store using free WooCommerce software attached to a WordPress site or blog. You can buy nice e-commerce themes from Code + Coconut or Bluchic.