I am not sure of the age of everyone reading my blog, so I will give you a little background. Before the Internet (yes, there was a time when there WAS no internet, just like there were no VCRs, oh wait a minute ... you don't know what a VCR is, do you?), you used to get the Sunday paper. In the paper was all the ads for the week. You could compare which stores had the best prices for a certain item. You could go to the store and buy it.
Then came the magic of the internet. Suddenly, you could look online, and find the item for a better price. Sometimes shipping would eat up the cost of the savings, sometimes not.
But then came the apps on your phone that took it one step farther. You can walk into Bed, Bath, & Beyond, scan the bar code, and find out that Amazon had this gadget for cheaper. I have no problem with this if you are planning on buying it from BB& B and getting the Amazon price. (They do that, you know! I got the cool ice cream maker that I just had to have, and then only used once from there.) I have a problem with walking into Target, look at an object you KNOW you are going to buy online, but you want to see it in person. IMHO, this is wrong. Just plain wrong.
Here we get into the cost of doing business. When you take all your business online, you drive local business out of business. Big whoop, right? You'll still be getting the better price, right? Wrong. I am not going to go into an explanation of capitalism, but suffice it to say that the more businesses there are, the better the consumer fairs. For example, way back when I was pregnant with Goldie (in 1990!), the two local private hospitals were having a war to attack pregnant women. They were wooing us like crazy. Newly renovated rooms! Steak dinners on your way home in a limo! When I had my last two babies, no more war, no more wooing. Just hello, thanks for using us, bye-bye. Competition drives the businesses to offer you the best product or service, knowing that you can go elsewhere. When you take away the competition, you end up with prices going up, and little choice.
I am IY"H (please G-d) going to make a quilt for my grandson. An I-Spy quilt. They use A LOT of fabric. Lots of different fabrics. I have a ton, but the last few I made were for girls.
I had my eye on several fabrics I wanted. I did go to our local quilt shops. We have a whooping TWO quilt shops. I am not talking fabric from Joanns or Hancocks or Hobby Lobby. I want fabric that will last through throw up and hot washes and all that other gross stuff kids do on their quilts. Anyway, I did buy from both stores, and I ordered online.
Why am I going on about this today? Because each of those stores were SOOOO thankful for my business. I made a point of telling them I was shopping local. I go to the little toy store near my house every once in a while. Why? Because when I need a gift in a hurry, I don't want to find that they are closed and now my only choice is Target. When I want to make sure that the color of the fabric is the right blue or what have you, I don't want to wait for my order to arrive, only to find out that I ordered puke green instead of pretty green.
Shop local. Support your neighbors, and keep capitalism alive and well in your community. And now that I have all my fabric, from two online stores and two local stores, I can get down to the fun part of actually planning the quilt.
(BTW, one good thing about Internet shopping is being able to find something you can't find locally. None of my stores had the "black and white cookie" fabric that I just had to have. That picture came from Fabric Paradise if you need some too. The owner is a doll, very easy to work with. She has loads of cool fabric too. I don't work there or get anything for plugging them; just a happy customer.)
Now if only I could find a money to support my spending habit ....
Happy Shopping!
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