Is Local Washing a Problem?

I went into Perfumania last night to finish up some last minute Christmas shopping, and thought, gee - this was great. Got to park right in front, walked 10 steps to the front door, and was waited on by someone who was familiar with their entire stock , got me exactly what I was looking for, and the entire transaction took 10 minutes.

Now, I'm thinking to myself, I couldn't even walk across the local Walmart store in 10 minutes - what a superb shopping experience. I took special appreciation to this, as a local business owner who tries to specialize in pet products that solve problems, works to educate our staff to be knowledgeable and able to answer patrons questions about topics that range from special dietary needs, food allergies, skin and coat problems, and how to fit clothes well for dogs.

So, I decided to research Perfumania as I was very impressed. Problem I found (and they did not lead me to believe this in any way) was that while Perfumania is a small, specialty store that models what I would want, it really isn't a local business. According to a study, every $100 spent locally, $45 stays in the community. The problem was that the study, conducted by the firm Civic Economics, found that to be true only if the money was spent at a locally owned business. Shop at a chain store, the analysis found, and only $13 of that $100 spent stays in the community.

This got me digging a little further, and found an interesting article from "The Urban Tulsa Weekly" that says:

Hoping to capitalize on growing public enthusiasm for all things local, some of the world's biggest corporations are brashly laying claim to the word "local."

This new variation on corporate greenwashing--local washing --is, like the buy-local movement itself, most advanced in the context of food. Hellmann's, the mayonnaise brand owned by the processed-food giant Unilever, is test-driving a new "Eat Real, Eat Local," initiative in Canada. The ad campaign seems aimed partly at enhancing the brand by simply associating Hellmann's with local food. But it also makes the claim that Hellmann's is local, because most of its ingredients come from North America.

It's not the only industrial food company muscling in on local. Frito-Lay's new television commercials use farmers as pitchmen to position the company's potato chips as local food, while Foster Farms, one of the largest producers of poultry products in the country, is labeling packages of chicken and turkey "locally grown."

You can read the entire article here.

According to Small Business Trends, "small businesses did not create the economic situation we find ourselves in. It was created by greed and excess and speculation — mostly on the part of very big businesses." I love this quote from Natasha Ball, also from the Urban Tulsa Weekly:

"Let's play a game. Which sounds more appetizing: A peach sprayed with pesticides and picked hard and green in an industrial orchard in California, processed and packed at a sprawling, faceless, corporate farm and trucked a couple thousand miles to your local grocery store...


Or, a peach picked ripe at a farm in a city you could, despite the geography courses at your public school, pinpoint on a map, delivered to your farmers' market totally free of chemicals, long-distance travel damage and other modes of interference and sold to you by a friendly guy in a hat who reminds you of your grandfather?

Wait. There wasn't really a choice presented there, was there? It's one of those "duh" decisions. Who in this day and age doesn't want unmitigated, fresh fruit grown by people they know? After multiple food safety scares, documentaries extolling the nutritional merits of fresh-picked produce and all those blurbs on TV about how we should all be reducing our carbon footprint, demand for food grown within a stone's throw from home is on the rise."

Local small businesses are going to help save the economy, provide better, greener products, and we actually create more jobs collectively than centrailized corporations tout they create. Small businesses make up more than 99.7% of all employers and create more than half of the private non-farm gross domestic product (GDP). (SBA Office of Advocacy)


While small specialty shops offer a great shopping experience which I truly appreciate, there is a larger prize to be had - small specialty shops that are local small businesses offer the best of both worlds. I'm not so sure the one-stop-shopping is really all that it's cracked up to be, if you really look at the net time spent at the bigger corporations, and no help to find what you are looking for. I wish we had more local small businesses to shop at.