Amazon and the socially conscious Seattle customer

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From the Seattle Times:

Amazon’s nascent grocery store venture puts Seattle residents between a rock and a hard spot. Rock: Many of us treasure our local retailers. Hard spot: Amazon is a locally headquartered company of enormous value to the city.

. . . .

I never did like the term “consumer.” It conjures the image of an insatiable creature consuming the resources of an overcrowded planet (the cheaper the better), a number to aggregate by giant corporations and their environment-stressing 10,000-mile supply chain.

Customers, on the other hand, realize that every purchase they make have consequences. Each potentially is a vote: for sustainability, responsibility and, not least of all, the health of their local economies. The more votes given to big corporations, the less viable are the local, or local branches of, retailers that are essential to the strength and fabric of their communities.

. . . .

Most Americans are consumers, so the battle will be between Amazon and other giants, especially Wal-Mart. But Seattle has plenty of socially conscious customers — and Amazon puts them in a bind.

On the one hand, e-commerce generally and Amazon specifically have put innumerable local shops out of business here, their empty storefronts filled by restaurants (how many restaurants can a city sustain?). What’s lost is community leadership on the part of owners, as well as providing employment and mentoring of new local retailers from their former employees. Like other giants, Amazon is “cheap,” but also expensive. The costs are tallied up quietly over many years in a city more drab, more conformist, more part of the international corporate Borg.

On the other hand, Amazon is the biggest driver behind Seattle’s remarkable prosperity, bringing capital and talent at prodigious rates. Without Amazon, the city wouldn’t be sweet Seattle circa 1990. It would more likely be like other struggling American metropolises, with a dash of Microsoft. Also, the fees and taxes brought in by Amazon’s construction pay a big part of Seattle’s most cherished progressive programs.

I face this dilemma as an author: Amazon carries and sells my books to a wide audience. But Amazon is also the enemy of the local independent bookstores that were essential to launching and maintaining my book-writing career. Plus, Amazon is largely making my neighborhood, Belltown, better. In our family, we try to spread the love: spending as much as possible at downtown and local retailers, including Pike Place Market. But we also inevitably buy from Amazon when a product can’t be had nearby.

Link to the rest at the Seattle Times and thanks to J.A. for the tip.

 

20 thoughts on “Amazon and the socially conscious Seattle customer”

  1. Is this coming from some alternate universe Seattle?
    I have friends in Seattle. This doesn’t sound much like the local culture.
    I’m sure the locals ’round here will clarify.

    Makes it sound like Seattle residents angst over breathing the same air as Amazon, Microsoft, and Boeing.

    Now, if this were coming from Berkely…

    • Nah. Maybe people newer to Seattle than I am are bringing their angst with them. I’ve been here long enough to still be amazed anyone is aware of the city at all. We spent a long time being ignored and I miss those days terribly. Oh, and Seattleites are not passive-aggressive. If we ignore you it’s because we just don’t like pushy rudeness.

  2. Amazon is also the enemy of the local independent bookstores that were essential to launching and maintaining my book-writing career.

    If one were to crunch the numbers on Jon Talton’s career, I suspect local independent bookstores would not be a critical factor in launching his career. The viability of a writer’s career is determined by sales. Talton has eleven mysteries and thrillers in print. The first was published in 2001. Until shown invoices to the contrary, I simply do not believe that first book and his subsequent books reached sales levels sufficient to convince his publisher to offer him another contract through local independent bookstores. No Amazon. No Barnes & Noble. No Borders.

    Searching for 2001 market share information, I found this:

    In 2001, the chains declined somewhat to a 23% market share, while the independents sustained yet another dramatic decline, ending up with only a 15% share. As for the rest of the market: books clubs, 20% share; wholesale-price clubs, 7%; mass merchandisers, 6%; mail order, 3%; food and drug stores, 3%; discount stores, 3%; used bookstores, 3%; the internet, 8%; and all others, 10%.

    Source: The Book Publishing Industry by Albert N Greco, p221.

  3. Plus this gem,
    “This isn’t moral greatness. It’s selfishly wanting to keep and enhance a wonderful city. Too many places are already defined by retail boxes surrounded by enormous parking lagoons — or consumers waiting for their parcels at home and, maybe a few, wondering what happened to their community.”

    Schmuck. If I can’t park at the store, because its got the 2-4 spaces they were allotted in 1950 when the building went up, I will not shop there, no matter how great/local/sustainable/[buzzword BS] that store is…

    I live in a small city in a small county in a reasonably small state. I WISH we had your problem, Seattle. My counter-example is that the local community stores are closing ANYWAY, even here. In fact, its so bad, we WELCOME box stores and chains, so we’ll have stores at all. Shopping at the store we can get to makes us Conformist? Seriously? I want to eat, I want to buy clothes, and toys, and auto parts, and, and, and…

    Bah. Wittering about Seattle culture will not fix the loss of local stores – get off your chunk and build some stores, then I’ll support you.

    Al the Greatly Testy About People Who Bemoan the Loss of Tradition Without Doing Anything to Support Tradition Other Than Complaining

    I have lived in major metro areas and in small towns and grew up living outside of town, so it isn’t that I don’t know how its like in Seattle. I am tired of city-dwellers telling me how hard they have it, though. Suck it up, live in a small town and see how much you don’t have and can’t get unless you go to the city or Amazon…

    • @ ATGAP

      “Suck it up, live in a small town and see how much you don’t have and can’t get unless you go to the city or Amazon…”

      …or the local WalMart! LOL. 🙂

      (BTW, Wally World deliberately targets small towns when they decide where to build; it’s certainly a strategy that’s paid off well for them.)

      • Yeah, we have WalMart and Costco, and those stores are BUSY. My mom told me about the split between locals wanting the store versus visitors and activists who’s moved here who didn’t want to see a big box ruin paradise (I was away, in the military, when we got the WalMart here).

        Every time I see an empty storefront, or closed mall, I feel bad… that’s my history shut too. But I really hate the angsty whining that big boxes are wrecking everything when the whiners aren’t DOING anything about it.

      • BTW, Wally World deliberately targets small towns when they decide where to build;

        That’s funny. Here in Montana, only the big cities have a Wal-Mart. … Oh, wait.

    • live in a small town and see how much you don’t have and can’t get unless you go to the city or Amazon…

      True that. I live on the other side of the Puget Sound, and for anything other than Walmart, Costco and Target, I have to take a stupid ferry to Seattle or drive two hours somewhere. I love to shop local… when there’s someplace to shop.

      In the meantime though, I have Amazon.

  4. Not the first time we’ve seen an article about a perceived cultural despair emerging in Seattle via Zon. Despite Zon’s apparent destructive evils, that they are redeemable in that their growth has supported lots of Progressive Stuff. Sigh.

    Without devolving into a Right vs. Left or Rural vs. Metro line of spat, I’ll just add that this piece (like every other Amazon-cultural-quandary piece before it) strikes me as the type of angst that very few people in the US, or the world for that matter, can AFFORD to suffer.

      • I’ll cop to fuzzy thinking, if pressed. Not so good on anguished hand-wringing, my drill instructors pooh-poohed that sort of behavior.

        Al the Razor-Sharp Thinker (Sometimes)

  5. Local matters for some stuff. I see lots of added value in having my hairdresser within 15 mins driving distance (better yet, walking distance). Ditto doctor. Ditto fresh organic produce. I really like if it got from field to my tumtum really quickly, like 48 hours or fewer. HAs more nutrition, that way, and tastes better, too.

    Book? I buy ebooks. I don’t need a B&M store.

    I read digitally 99% of the time. What? I should change my reading habits to support a local books culture? No, my local books culture is people getting together to talk about books or write books (reading groups, crit groups, book swap groups). Book culture is not someone selling me books. Book culture is people talking and writing books. You don’t need any store for that–other than a coffeeshop or deli or a library conference room or a university classroom open to bibliophiles. A park or someone’s living room or a beach gathering works fine.

  6. “But Seattle has plenty of socially conscious customers — and Amazon puts them in a bind.”

    Actually it’s the socially conscious customers that put themselves in a bind.

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