OP/ED: Plugging the dike won't keep our stores open
By Mona Mattei
It seems that a comedy of errors has Boundary locals wondering just how we can keep our small businesses alive, and, in fact, have led to a string of doomsday rumours that we know everyone just loves to share.
The latest in the doom and gloom department has one of our largest grocery outlets closing. Yes folks, our intrepid reporter, Erin Perkins, here at the Sentinel spent hours tracking that one down.
No, Overwaitea is not closing its doors, but they are struggling like many local shops.
Aside from the general love of gossip, especially about horrendous events, it does raise the question about why these rumours start, and brings up our age-old dilemma of small town life – how do we keep our businesses open with the leakage of shopping dollars out of the area in three directions?
Now we all know one of our friends, maybe it’s even us, who heads to Walmart in Colville regularly, or up to Costco in Kelowna. A day-trip to Trail is not off the radar either.
Come on, I’m sure that even you, dear reader, have been known to pick up your gas and a six-pack of beer along with your latest shipment from Amazon in Danville.
So what makes a store anywhere but Grand Forks or Midway so attractive? Well, for one, it is anywhere but Grand Forks or Midway. People love an excuse to get out of town, have a nice meal or catch a movie somewhere that isn’t here.
That truly is a small town syndrome – there’s stuff to do, but we have short attention spans – we like to be entertained in new ways. Living two and a half hours or less from major centers makes it attractive to head out of town for a day and, well, we might as well save on groceries when we’re there.
But there’s more to the comedy. The border crossing limits have just changed to allow higher amounts of spending in the United States. Does that actually have an impact? Not really since the majority of our border traffic has been out of the country for less than 24 hours. Colville here we come!
I do my best to shop local whenever possible, but with the high Canadian dollar, and the price differential in the United States, it quite honestly makes it tough. When the price of the product is less than half the price charged in town, just how do we keep our money at home?
We’ve talked about this before, readers. The volume of products in the States makes it cheaper, but I truly believe there’s an element of competition at work too to keep the prices down. Why can’t we see a more competitive playing field in our stores?
Well, we live in a small town. Taxes, freight, and overall acceptance of higher pricing all conspire against us.
All our small businesses struggle to make it against the big guys, whether you’re a new player like the Sentinel against the 100-year-old competitor, or Contact Photo Arts against Amazon. But what we do have for our customers is a commitment to our community and service that can’t be beat.
Can we plug the leaks? Probably not, but we can be here for our customers so they choose us over them when the decision to keep shopping home takes hold.