Study Touts Benefits of Shopping Locally

by Bridget Kinsella, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 5/7/2007

Independent booksellers have long argued that shopping at locally owned stores is important to support the economic health of a region; now a report supports that contention. "The San Francisco Retail Diversity Study," released last week, showed that independent bookstores contributed $54 million back into the San Francisco area, while chain stores and Internet booksellers contributed back $8 million a year.

The study was commissioned by the San Francisco Locally Owned Merchants Alliance along with support from the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association and the American Booksellers Association. Civic Economics, the research company that conducted the survey over two years, had previously researched the economic impact of local businesses in Austin, Tex., and Chicago, but the San Francisco study is the largest of its kind.

In addition to looking at the impact of buying from locally owned stores, the survey found that independent retailers in San Francisco had a stunning 55% share of the book market in San Francisco, far above the national average, which gives indie booksellers roughly a 10% share. "We suspected it would be good news," said Hut Landon, executive director of NCIBA. "But if I had known that independent booksellers had 55% of the market share in San Francisco, I would have commissioned a study five years ago."

No one at Barnes & Noble or Borders was available to comment on the survey, but it is not surprising that locally owned businesses contribute more to the region they are located in than chains or Internet companies. Online retailers pay no sales tax on books bought by San Francisco customers, and, or course, have no employees in the area. Chains also do not spend money in the local community on services they retain on a national level. Local businesses, Landon noted, use local lawyers and accountants and local businesses to make their signs and other products. "This is not antichain," said Landon. "This just gives people another reason to shop local first."

Pete Mulvihill, one of the owners of Green Apple Books in the Richmond neighborhood in San Francisco and a SFLOMA member, said the most interesting part of the study showed the impact on a community when consumers shift just 10% of their spending. According to the study, if consumers in the San Francisco area redirected their spending on books by 10% from chain and Internet book retailers to locally owned bookstores, the increased economic output in the form of such things as taxes and wages would be more than $3.7 million annually, and 25 new bookselling jobs would be produced. (The study also examined similar effects in the toy, sporting goods and dining areas.)

Members of SFLOMA presented the study to the mayor's office. "We hope politicians will get people to think about these things differently," said Landon. "The whole purpose of this is to drive consumers to do more of their spending in locally owned business."

Neal Sofman, one of the former owners of A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books and current owner of the Bookshop West Portal, said it all comes down to self-interest. "When you tell people that if you don't shop local first, then [you] are ruining [your] tax base, they get that," said Sofman.

"I hope it will help people see that even a small, incremental change in their shopping habits can make a difference," said Mulvihill. "Where you spend your money really determines what your neighborhood is going to look like in 10 years."