>> Again my mileage varied. I've found items in mom & pops that I'd
>> never find in the franchise stores. The small stores are often
>> specialists carrying much greater variety, while the big boxes
>> try to be everything to everyone and have limited stock. The
>> little Asian stores carry intriguing food I've never heard of
>> before, and common stuff is often at prices better than the
>> chains. While chains have the advantage of buying in bulk, they
>> also must support large heirarchies of management, higher
>> overheads, and often stockholders, so it's quite possible to
>> find good prices and variety in the small stores who don't carry
>> all that baggage. Compare a tiny Manhattan side street deli to
>> what any top-end franchise supermarket anywhere might carry and
>> there simply is no comparison.
One of the things people say about big chain bookstores is that they "have everything."
That's total bullshit if you remember the well-stocked indie bookstores that started going out of business in the 1980s. What the chain bookstores have are *lots of copies* of titles, whereas the indies would (will) usually have one copy of each title.
Back in November I finally stepped foot into a Half Price Books, which is a used bookstore chain in the Midwest and a few states elsewhere. My friend just loved the store because its SF selection was so deep. We got around to visiting two more locations in Kansas City and Lawrence. I explained to my friend that Half Price Books looked like an indie, but if you run a bookstore like I do, you can quickly see the signs of a chain. When you have tables and shelves full of multiple copies of titles, that's a sign that you have a chain that is buying books in bulk from publishers.
Half Price Books has around 80 bookstores.
>> Because the big boxes are running the mom&pops out of business
>> and mega-mergers continue to happen, we may see the time where
>> no competition exists and these huge corporations can call all
>> the shots on price, having the power to prevent any new
>> competition. I greatly fear the power of big business and
>> intentionally shop at mom&pops whenever I can as one form of
>> activism against globalization.
The big boxes have been running the mom & pops out of business, but I think that the tide is about to shift the other way. I live in suburbia where they've been building box stores on top of each other. One can see how the market for these monstrosities is oversaturated. They are cannibalizing business from each other. On top of that, traffic around these developments is crazy awful. I think this will spur an interest by homeowners to move away from the sprawl in coming years.
I think that people will also start seeking out mom & pops that offer better service. Did you see the recent NY Times article about an indie coffeeshop in Kansas City defeating Starbucks? I think people will start rejecting the big chains.
Has anybody else noticed how vacant Home Depot stores are these days?
Chuck