Corporate co-opting threatens the success of the "buy local" movement
by Stacy Mitchell
HSBC, one of the biggest banks on the planet, has taken to calling itself "the world's local bank." Winn-Dixie, a 500-outlet supermarket chain spanning five southern states, recently launched an ad campaign under the tagline "Local flavor since 1956." The International Council of Shopping Centers, a global consortium of mall owners and developers, is pouring millions of dollars into television ads urging people to "Shop Local" — at their nearest mall. Even Wal-Mart is getting in on the act, hanging bright green banners over its produce aisles that simply say "Local."
The Real Buy Local Movement
In one way, all of this corporate local-washing is good news for local economy advocates: It represents the best empirical evidence yet that the grassroots movement for locally produced goods and independently owned businesses now sweeping the country is having a measurable impact on the choices people make.
"Think of the millions of dollars these big companies spend on research and focus groups," observes Dan Cullen of the American Booksellers Association (ABA), a trade group that represents 1,700 independent bookstores and last year launched IndieBound, an initiative that helps locally owned businesses communicate their independence and community roots. "They wouldn't be doing this on a hunch."
Locally grown food has soared in popularity. The U.S. is now home to 4,385 active farmers markets, a third of which were started since 2000 (see sidebar for Northeast Ohio markets). Food co-ops and neighborhood greengrocers are on the rise. Driving is down, while data from several metropolitan regions shows that houses located within walking distance of small neighborhood stores have held value better than those isolated in the suburbs where the nearest gallon of milk is a five-mile drive to Target.
A growing number of independent businesses are trumpeting their local ownership and community roots and reporting a surge in customer traffic as a result. In April, even as Virgin Megastores prepared to shutter their last U.S. record store, independent music stores across the country were mobbed for the second annual Record Store Day. A celebration of local music retailers that features in-store concerts and exclusive releases, the event drew hundreds of thousands of people into stores, was one of Google's top search terms and triggered a 16-point upswing in album sales, according to Nielson SoundScan.
In city after city, inde-pendent businesses are organizing and creating the beginnings of what could become a powerful counterweight to the big-business lobbies that have long dominated public policy. Local business alliances have now formed in more than 130 cities and collectively count some 30,000 businesses as members (Northeast Ohio's can be found at ibuyneo.com). Through grassroots "buy local" and "local first" campaigns, these alliances are calling on people to choose independent businesses and local products more often and making the case that doing so is critical to rebuilding middle-class prosperity, averting environmental collapse and ensuring that our daily lives are not smothered by corporate uniformity.
Surveys and anecdotal reports from business owners suggest that these initiatives are in fact changing spending patterns. A survey of 1,100 independent retailers conducted in January by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (where I work) found that, amid the worst economic downturn since the Depression, buy-local sentiment is giving local businesses an edge over their chain competitors. While the Commerce Department reported that overall retail sales plunged almost 10 percent over the holidays, the survey found that independent retailers in cities with buy-local campaigns saw sales drop an average of just 3 percent from the previous year. Many respondents attributed this relative good fortune to the fact that more people are deliberately seeking out locally owned businesses.
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