Do people even read these things anymore?
I feel like blogging had its heyday a decade or two ago. I also feel like a big part of the reason why is that modern consumers value information delivered directly to their visual cortex, no reading required. Convenience is king, and our society not only craves it but demands it. I think about that a lot – often with some sort of alcohol coursing through my dehydrated veins.
I am overly emotional when it comes to my job. I’m only being slightly dramatic when I say that retail may have saved me, in a very weird and meandering way. I’ll touch on that in a future post…don’t want to scare you away too soon. What you need to know for now is that I love my job. I love going in, opening up, seeing my regulars. I love getting to be a small part of their day, as inconsequential as it might be to them. I run a small family owned pet store, and have been in this industry for over 20 years at this point. I can’t imagine working for anyone else, or doing anything else. I’ve found my people, and I’ve found meaning in what I do. I do need to get something off my chest though.
The modern consumer is really fucking with my thunder.
Twenty-six percent of jobs in the state I live in rely on retail (about 1.2 million) (source: National Retail Federation). That’s not even touching the butterfly effect the retail industry has – think of the truckers, the warehouse workers, the payment processing industry, the sales representatives, the packaging industry, the commercial real estate industry, the marketing industry…the list goes on and on, ad infinitum, industry after industry.
So…why do we vilify brick and mortar retail so much? Is it that it’s more expensive? (I often find that my particular brick and mortar location is pretty comparable with online pricing, especially with the monthly sales that we kill ourselves to offer). Is it the convenience? (I mean…really…how often am I passing by a store in my day to day travels?) Or is it something deeper? Is it that our culture has shifted so much that we don’t even think twice about the repercussions of ignoring the businesses that helped build our communities?
Bingo. I think.
I’m primarily talking about family owned and operated businesses. The type that give the teenager from down the road their first job. The ones that sponsor the little league team. The ones that stay up late at night making raffle baskets for the senior center’s annual fundraiser.
The ones that show up for their community in every way they can…and yet still seem to be struggling to make ends meet.
In 2025 over 8,200 retail chain stores closed nationwide (source – Coresight Research). Independent store closures are hard to track since they rarely announce their woes publicly, however Wall Street analysts predict that we will lose 45,000 retail locations by 2029 (source – Business Insider). Most of those will be independently owned unless our culture changes its purchasing habits. It is my hope to shed some light on what we struggle with, as I feel like most consumers (unless they have owned or operated a small business) have no idea of the challenges that are facing our community.
So that’s me. And that’s the point of this blog. And I have no idea if anyone will take the time to read it, but at least I was able to put it out there. And I apologize ahead of time…for the swearing, for the flagrant disregard of all applicable grammar standards, and for my inability to leave well enough alone.
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