Originally Posted by
ghostrider
When you shop at a locally owned business, 60 cents of your dollar goes back into the community.
When you shop at a chain store, about 20 cents stays in the area. When you shop at a discount store, only 6 cents of your dollar remains local. And when you shop online, in most cases, none of it benefits your community.
Originally Posted by
ghostrider
It was me that posted those stats, and they are actually a bit low. It's closer to 68 cents on the dollar that stays local going for payroll, taxes, advertising, fuel suppliers and other local independent small businesses. 'Community' is a broader word than just one neighborhood or town. You do have a vested interest in people buying online, and I accept that, but please check into the stats before you dismiss them as false.
Well, not to be too pedantic here, but your stats would be more correct if, instead of making the broad statement implying that a huge percentage of what you spend - "your dollar" - stays in the community -- you had more accurately stated that a large percentage of the net profits gained locally stay local.
"Your dollar" spent locally implies total sales, i.e. gross revenue. Out of that number, at least in fabric sales, a huge percentage of the money is sent elsewhere, as I stated originally.
Of the remaining few percent of gross sales that remain as net profit, I agree with you -- spent locally that profit mostly stays local, and depending on how large you define the "community," the larger you make the "community" the more the profit stays in the "community."
But if you're talking about gross revenue, most of it goes to other parts of the worldwide "community," whether you shop in your local town or shop online.
It really depends on what you're buying - for instance, if you're buying milk, and that milk comes out of a cow down the lane from you and it's purified in a local dairy and goes to a local store, then a very high percentage of gross sales for that milk stay local.
If, however, you're buying fabric, start off with the fact that most fabric is imported from Asia then distributed by distributors not in the local community. By the time it gets to my store, the fabric cost, which, with shipping costs (not paid locally) add up to over 60% of the price you pay for the fabric (or 90% or more if deeply discounted.) Then add in all the myriad other expenses in operating a store, that are paid to non-local entities, and you're left with very little profit to spread around locally.
If you're lucky enough to even make a profit, yes, you're likely to spend those profits locally. And if you pay people to work for you and those people live locally, they they'll most likely spend their paychecks locally.
I don't think we have a disagreement on the fact that if you spend locally, more money stays local. We're just having a misunderstanding on what money we're talking about.
