I recently talked with a local business owner; an employer of young people who make pretty good money. Those people spend most of their money….elsewhere; Nanaimo specifically. And those same people come home after supporting the wages of people elsewhere and… they ask for more hours. They are educated people but really they are hurting their own well-being. They’re saving money; so they think, yet they are costing themselves money in order to save the money that they think they’re saving….Confused?
I know, we’ve heard it all before….SHOP LOCAL. Every business owner from every town preaches it; pretty much non-stop. It gets annoying…..
But, they are right! And really it’s not only because the ownership wants us to shop local it’s because we, you and I, NEED for us to Shop Local. It’s basic math. I’ll try my best to explain.
Let’s say that we have 500 active businesses in Port Alberni. And, let’s use an average annual sales figure of $500,000., which of course is probably way off. Still, it gives us some numbers to crunch. We now take our calculators and determine that we have $250,000,000. (250 million) in local sales. Now let’s realize that a typical business might run with a 30% wage cost in order to operate efficiently. So, now we have $75,000,000. In wages being paid annually to local people.
Now the next question is what % of the total expenditures is the $250,000,000. in sales? For argument sakes let’s use 50%. That means then that an additional $250,000,000. (250 million) Is being spent….elsewhere! And that translates to the same $75,000,000. In wages being paid out to people who live in those communities; not in Port Alberni.  Therein lies the problem. It’s not the business owner that wants us to shop locally, though of course they do, but instead it’s US that want US to shop locally because we need the jobs. We need the second $75,000,000. in available wages to be produced here, in our back yard. So in the end, the SHOP LOCAL problem is not a ‘business’ problem per se but instead it is a community problem that can be resolved simply by doing some math.