Digital Frontiers

Small, family-owned businesses used to dominate the American shopping landscape. Typically, every town would have several small retail stores that would collectively serve the various needs of consumers. This was brought to an end in the early 1960s with the incorporation of Wal-Mart and other big chain stores. These stores grew in number, spreading throughout the country, so that now it’s hard to envision even the smallest town lacking a Wal-Mart. These stores also grew in breadth – I have been to a small town where it seemed like that the Super Wal-Mart covered everything from sporting goods to grocery shopping, to banking. These big chain stores used this size to bargain for reduced pricing from manufacturers, which allowed them to out-compete the local business, driving many out of businesses.

Colonial Photo & Hobby

One would assume that a similar process of small business culling would occur with the advent of online shopping via Amazon or Craigslist, because of further price decreases and the lack of sales tax. In this writer’s experience, though, this hasn’t been the case. I will use my family’s business, Colonial Photo & Hobby, as an example because it is what I have the greatest experience with. The store deals in amateur and professional camera equipment, photo processing, framing, RC vehicles, and model trains. This caters to several niche customer groups and can also run on the more expensive end of retail shopping. They tend to require a knowledgeable sales staff (knowledge that can be hard to find online without familiarity with their jargon) and the price tends to make customers want to hold the product in their hands before they actually commit to buying it. If not for these traits (and the 55 years of reputation in Central Florida), Colonial Photo & Hobby most likely would not have survived the spread of chain stores. If you were to look at other small businesses still around, I bet you would find similar circumstances.

In regards to online shopping, I believe that the same traits that made a shop survive the spread of chain stores will help it survive the online economy. In fact, it seems like the chain stores have the greater threat leveled against them by online shopping; the same customers who left the small business for the chain store is more likely to leave the chain store for online shopping. An example is Ritz Camera, a chain camera store you have probably seen in the mall and happens to be one of Colonial Photo & Hobby’s larger competitors, which declared bankruptcy last year having to close half of its stores.

Small businesses could also use online marketing to spread word to new customers, network with each other, and share customers in different regions. An example of this is the Promaster group, which is a group of small camera stores which use their collective buying power to get lower prices from accessory manufacturers. The Promaster group has expanded to an online community which shares information and answers questions via blog. It seems that the only marketplace can only help the small business.

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