I’m weaning myself from Amazon. I’ve been lazy, using Amazon’s impressive delivery abilities, when I should have been cultivating and using healthier ways to buy books and other things.
For work purchases, I’ve stopped cold turkey and am discovering alternative channels to buy supplies. I’m buying our gaffer tape directly from Gaffer Power, but was surprised to see it’s being shipped by “Amazon Shipping”, something new to me but not surprising. Oh well, one small step.
For other supplies, I’m moving to Eaton’s, a local office supply distributor. They’ll deliver for free to the store, and would be as convenient if not more than Amazon’s rapid delivery to their lockers. If it costs a bit more, the upside is the money goes to local people at Eaton’s.
Now, for books, and I’m almost exclusively speaking of e-books, I’ve been using bookshop.org. Their business model is to sell books, physical and e, including the customer’s choice of a local bookstore as a partner in the commerce. The local bookstore gets a cut of the profit, and not just a pittance, an actual, meaningful piece of the action, upwards of 30%. I can also have a practice of checking with the library before buying an e-book, though their service leaves out a lot of books.
bookshop’s a B-corp, which allows them to channel more of the profit away from personal or corporate profit and toward helping out struggling businesses such as local bookstores. And they seem to be what they say they are, an altruistic but profitable enterprise doing some real good and providing a true alternative to Amazon’s growing near-monopoly.
One thing I’ve found, searching for and using the alternatives–a small, focused retailer will often provide as good a price and always better customer service. An example is B&B Supply, where we get our price guns and labels. They do nothing but that, and are clearly focused and obsessive. I also like their small-townness and pride in reusing cardboard boxes for shipping. Plus they can repair the price guns if we need that. So, why buy these things at Amazon? B&B points out you can get off-brand labels and will for sure pay less, but for noticeably poorer quality. This poor quality makes for trouble down the road, not worth the pennies saved.
Another example is MyTee Products, the Ohio company where we bought the rails we installed on the box truck’s walls, to fasten our tie-downs to. They specialize and focus on truck equipment, make a lot of their own products or source in the USA, and clearly know their business.
A local example is Schuele Paint and Hardware, a long time vendor of ours, and one of my personal favorite local businesses. A Benjamin Moore dealer, with a lot of freely available institutional knowledge and a great line of products. And they’ve been running one of the best local hardware stores for a while now, the smallest we’ve ever seen while still full service. And of course, our money goes to local people, owner Paul Leahy and his superior employees.
You get a lot more than you might realize, buying from companies like this. That’s one way they survive.
As always, more later . . .