hello and welcome to episode 15 of the
to fluency podcast it is great to have
you
with me today and before we get started
if you are listening to this on youtube
then check out the description for your
free book the five-step plan for english
fluency and you can also do that if
you're listening on spotify apple
podcast or google podcasts or whichever
platform you are using now today we're
going to talk about
shopping local or local shopping
and this just means
buying things from businesses
which are native to your area so an
example of this is
buying
shoes from a local shoe shop one that is
based in the city where you live
versus
buying shoes
online from amazon
so there's a big difference here and i'm
going to talk about how this trend has
changed over the years
i'm going to talk about some stories
from my childhood too which is going to
be great listening practice for you
and then i'm just going to give some
thoughts on what i'm trying to do and
why i think this is important now in
episode 14 which you can
watch or listen to which i'll put a link
in the description
we talked about buying online and how
it's so easy these days to fall into the
habit of just buying something online
and getting everything online because of
convenience and this trend
rocketed last year when
coronavirus happened and shops closed
down and the only way you could buy
stuff was online and i think people have
fallen into the habit of doing this now
and it's just become a norm this was a
trend that was happening anyway
but it really just took off last year
due to what happened i want to give you
three statistics
when it comes to buying local and i
think these are really interesting okay
so the first one is this
small businesses of 500 or fewer
employees make up over 99
of us employer firms
so small businesses of 500 or fewer
employees or you can call them workers
make up over 99 of us employer firms so
the majority the vast majority
of businesses in the us are small
businesses now speaking of amazon here
is a start in just one year amazon
displaced
62 000 shops and 900 000 retail shop
jobs
so amazon displaced 62 000 shops
and 900 000 retail jobs
and then the last stats here is that the
lockdowns caused over 100 000
of local small businesses to close
permanently so this has been a big trend
as well where a lot of small businesses
had to close permanently due to the
restrictions
placed by local and big governments
so i think these three stats really
highlight two things the importance of
buying local if you care about local
businesses but also just the trend that
is happening at the moment where online
retailers are really taking over
local businesses and this has been
happening for years now and i think
there are two ways to look at this when
you're thinking about this and the
implications and the first one is
to say well this is happening and it's
very difficult to stop this is a trend
that is just going to accelerate
and it's going to be very difficult for
that trend to stop
and you can think about things in the
past where the in the in the uk during
the industrial revolution and elsewhere
too in france
the luddites were a group of people who
wanted to stop the machines coming in
and taking over their jobs when it came
to producing cotton and other materials
and you can see this all the time when a
new type of industry comes in like uber
which is the car ride service
which has taken over traditional taxi
cabs and i've been in countries where
there have been big protests for example
in france from taxi drivers against
companies such as uber
but it's one of these things where you
think okay
is this a trend that's going to happen
anyway
is automation and online shopping
and apps like uber are they just going
to take over is that the trend that is
going to happen
and we can't do anything about it and
the second way to look at it is to think
well what can i do what do i think
is best in these situations and how can
i as a person
change these types of trends and
behaviors and personally i think it is
super important to buy local and the
stats that i shared before talk about
this and another stat here to highlight
it is that
if every us family spent just ten
dollars extra locally instead of at a
big box or national track chain so if
they spent ten dollars on a local
company versus a national company
over 9.3 billion
would be directly returned to our local
economies
so the benefit of buying local is it's
going to benefit your local economy
because when you spend money in stores
where the people who own the stores live
in your local area then that money is
going to stay in the local area instead
of going to
people who work in different cities and
to a company that is just going to take
the money and
make profit
now before i go on about some of my
habits i do want to talk about what it
was like growing up in the uk and just
how much more
emphasis there was on buying local and
just how much more of a way of life it
was so in the 80s and 90s there wasn't
anything like online shopping but there
was the
emergence of big box stores big
companies national companies that took
over high streets
so if you went to the center of preston
the city or town where i grew up then in
the past there would have been all these
local businesses so people who were
selling jewelry
food clothes all on the market or in the
on the high street but then that changed
a lot i think in the 70s 80s 90s where
the big box stores the big companies
took over the high street and basically
ran all the small businesses out of
business but what i remember growing up
is something a little bit different
because
i used to have a milk round
where
i used to deliver milk to people's
houses and in the past
the vast majority of people got their
milk from the local milkman
and you couldn't really or people didn't
get milk from the supermarket they had
it delivered
and we also had other things delivered
too like the the fish man would come
over once a week in his van and you
would go out to the van and buy fish
directly from the fishman and then you
would go to the local market or the
butchers to get your meat and all these
companies businesses were local
businesses so you wouldn't go to the
supermarket to get the milk the fish and
the meat instead you would get these
from three different places and i used
to have a milk round where i delivered
the milk to people's doors this job was
brutal
because i used to do it from five till
seven in the morning i used to wake up
at 4 30
and i did it in the winter it was
freezing cold and then i went to school
for the rest of the day so um that was
one of the toughest jobs i've had and
i'm not sure the reason why it has
changed so much i think a big reason is
convenience where supermarkets started
to stock everything that you needed
including clothes and toys and
everything else so you could go to one
shop once a week and get everything that
you need and i also think that a lot of
families now have their two parents
working all the time and obviously this
is based on
western countries countries like the uk
and the us and my experience of that but
it'll be also interesting to know what
it's like where you live too so if
there's a comment section below please
just give me your thoughts on on this
and how it has changed over the years
but i think the fact that two parents
are now working full-time you don't
really have the ability for one parent
to be able to go and do all these things
and to clean the house and then go to
different shops and buy local and
going from supermarkets to having
everything now we're really starting the
emergence of the online experience and
one of the good news stories for local
businesses is that they can also get
part of this online shopping experience
so for example i am trying to be more
conscious and i'm trying to buy
more things from local businesses and
one of the things i'm doing is i'm using
a local farm now and i've been doing
this for a while actually to to buy most
of the meat because the meat is high
quality they have good practices
and again it stay it keeps the money
within the local economy within the
local area so that's one thing i'm
trying to do more of and just make that
more part of my life and another thing
that has really taken off i think over
the last 10 to 15 years in the us
is the farmers market and this is where
farmers will bring their produce
mainly
um
vegetables and fruit but also you get
cheeses and meat and other products too
and they'll bring them to a an area
in
different areas around town and then you
can go there and buy directly from the
farmer and this is another way for
people to buy local and it also brings
about that community element too because
usually there is music you see the same
people there all the time and you're
engaging with farmers in a real way and
just to go back to the online shopping
part like i said a lot of businesses now
are setting themselves up so that you
can buy online from them and have things
delivered so i know a few people who own
businesses including restaurants
in the area where i live and they've
started to do a lot more of that this
started really from the coronavirus
lockdowns where people were businesses
the only way they could survive was to
deliver things so
this is happening with alcohol it's
happening with food we know people who
own a coffee company now who are
delivering local coffee
people who have a tea company delivering
local tea
and so there is there are ways to
marry which means
mix
the ability or the convenience of buying
online and also buying local and just
one of the differences that i have
noticed in a big way and this goes back
to a podcast episode i did where i
talked about getting around cities
and this is comparing
mainly places like spain to the us where
people are more reliant on the car in
the us and it's it's not walkable it's
very difficult to walk places in
certain cities and like i said new york
and places like chicago they are they
are different but when you go to small
town america it's quite difficult or
small cities it's difficult to walk
around town which means that you can't
just walk and go past local shops and
brow shops instead you get in your car
you go to shops in your car and again
this is like the breakdown of local
communities in a way and it's very it's
difficult to then reinvest and to buy
local when you don't feel part of that
community so i think the farmers market
is a great thing that's happening in in
the us
but if we do have that detachment from
local communities the ability to buy
online from local companies is a big
step forward so hopefully that has given
you some good listening practice and
before you go
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thank you so much for listening and i'll
speak to you soon bye