Online Savings What are you really Saving?

As the mother of 3 BOYS I try to save money ANYWHERE I CAN. Though as a retailer I really started to think about what is going on in this country right now and I have started to watch WHERE I save MONEY AND AT WHOSE EXPENSE (pun intended financial humor at it’s best).

I realize that at times the monetary savings may look great in the beginning but at what cost does it really come? When I was a kid I grew up in Baldwin. Within 5 blocks of my house there was a Lumber yard, barber, auto parts store, bakery, deli, bagel store, liquor store, a butcher, a florist, a dry cleaner, ice cream store, hardware store and Don Rocks a man that fixed Televisions and stereo equipment.

In my town we had Nunley’s this was an arcade, mini golf, carousel and small amusement park with a few rides that we all grew up riding, once we were in High School we then worked there.

When I was a teenager a Big Box Home Improvement store opened a town away, we thought this was incredible. My dad could do one stop shopping for any home improvement project he was doing, no more lumber yard for the lumber and hardware store for the incidentals and tool rental for the tools. He could now go to one store get all of that AND SAVE MONEY WIN WIN right?

Well when my dad would go to Baldwin Lumber, he knew the guys by name as they knew his. He would ask for advice on the project he was doing and they would happily all give their input from their years of experience. He gave this up the day he stepped into the Depot.

Yes the employees were friendly and some of them knew a bit about their products but with over a million skews it’s hard to be an expert on anything. He no longer needed to go to the hardware store for the smaller things needed for the project, but he realized that this also meant he no longer had the small talk either. It didn’t take my dad long to realize these people were his friends and he was somewhat cheating on them by going to the big box stores.

So for as long as they were in business which was a few more years he shopped at Baldwin Lumber, Baldwin Hardware and got all his meat at the local butcher. He would sit and talk with the guys at the small stores and they would say how are the girls knowing he was single father of 2 daughters. They would also cut him a break knowing he was a single father of 2 daughters, something that doesn’t ever happen at a corporate location.

To this day at 65 years old my dad still gets all of his flowers at a local florist, he knows he can save a few bucks getting them at one of the big stores but they will not call him by name or pick the perfect flowers for him for the right occasion, they don’t know that his older daughters favorite flower is a pink rose and his younger daughter loves daisies. They have software that will remind him of birthdays and anniversaries and give him a coupon code if he orders on line, but when he says add this teddy bear to my daughters bouquet there is no “AnnMarie” behind the counter saying “Thom you sent her that one last year let’s do this one” because yes at 40 years old I still love getting flowers and a teddy bear from my daddy.

So when you think about saving so much MONEY on line think of what you will be losing, think of what you WON’T be saving, like the relationship, the friendly person that answers your questions professionally, the local store that is always there to help. In the end that business and more continue to go out of business as they just can’t compete with online, online there is no rent, electric or gas bill, no salaries for people who know what they are talking about just need a few order takers, there’s much smaller overhead so they can chop their prices. When those businesses go under their stores are empty and their taxes go unpaid, this forces your town to raise your property taxes and so on and so forth, so in the end WHAT DID YOU SAVE?