Think Frugal, Buy Local | Tough times encourage local businesses to band together to capture revenue
Photo/Edd Cote
Bill Cavanagh, owner of C.C. Lowell in Worcester, was an early recruit to the Worcester Local First movement. Many “buy local†efforts are cropping up and ramping up efforts to get the word out for the holiday shopping season.
Massachusetts companies could look at the current economic moment in a couple of ways: a time to pinch pennies and look for the best deal possible on anything they buy, or a time to reach out to the business a few blocks down the street or a few towns over and find ways to work together.
A number of growing locally oriented initiatives say there’s no need to choose—the best deals may well come from nearby, if companies know where to look.
Worcester Local First, an initiative to encourage local buying, started in mid-2007, before the recession took hold. It now has about 200 businesses as members, up 18 percent from last year, according to the group’s coordinator, Steve Jones-D’Agostino.
“We thought we might shrink a little bit because of the economy, but we continue to grow,” he said.
Jones-D’Agostino said Worcester Local First has distributed more than 22,000 copies of the latest edition of its local business directory, which came out in late August, and it’s been organizing networking events for local business leaders.
One of the results of the group’s efforts, he said, is that company heads get a chance to meet each other and figure out ways to work together. Even companies that are sometimes competitors can sometimes find it useful to collaborate on large jobs, he said, and some businesses end up sending projects that they aren’t suited to work on to another local company that is.
Bill Cavanagh, owner of the Worcester art supply store C.C. Lowell, was an early recruit to the Worcester Local First movement. Cavanagh said he joined the group hoping it would help him find “two new customers a day.” But so far, progress has been slow.
“We’re a long way from moving the needle,” he said. “If we’re going to change the world it’s going to take a lot of awareness, especially in this economy.”
Christopher P. Geehern, executive vice president of marketing and communications at Associated Industries of Massachusetts, said that organization’s BuyMass.org initiative focuses on giving local companies a chance to prove themselves. The business-to-business campaign started in August of this year and already has 8,100 companies in its directory, with about 10 percent actively involved in the effort, Geehern said. The campaign began with some companies saying they had been preparing to buy parts overseas when they happened to learn about about a local option.
Geehern said that over the past five years he’s seen companies move toward looking for suppliers closer to home. Sourcing products within the state allows for better oversight and quality control, and for shorter lead times, he said.
With the holiday shopping season approaching, more retail-oriented business groups are also flying the buy local flag. The Wachusett Chamber of Commerce has produced a local shopping guide, coupons to stores in the area and a scavenger hunt designed to encourage shoppers to visit more local stores, according to its executive director, Meagan McCaffrey.
Like other buy-local organizers, McCaffrey said the chamber’s efforts are not intended to disparage other options but to shine more light on home-grown companies. The chamber held its holiday shopping kick-off the weekend before Thanksgiving to avoid competing with the Black Friday sales at malls and big-box stores. And McCaffrey said the chamber’s activities are open to chains as well as independent stores.
“Anyone can participate,” she said. “We’re not looking to compete…. We’re trying to show what the area has to offer.”
But for Cavanagh, the local movement is really about maintaining a region’s identity and avoiding the sense of sameness that comes with sprawl and big box stores. And groups like Worcester Local First are giving voice to the small, one- or two-person firms that make Worcester and other communities unique.
“If we don’t do something to work together there will be fewer of us (independent retailers),” he said. “That’s sort of retail Darwinism.”
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