Why should you shop at the shop around the corner instead of the big conglomerate chain store? Yes I’ve been watching “You’ve Got Mail” again. But maybe you need to be reminded just what the small shops have that the big ones don’t. First you have a direct link to the life and fiber of the place. Your comments and buying habits are like a whisper in the ear of the buyer, which is usually the owner. Your opinions, likes, and criticisms carry more weight with the small shop and they’re listening as if their livelihood depends upon it.

 

Then there is customer service. Yes all large retail establishments use the term, but its at the small Mom and Pop that the term is an actuality. They know their stuff and have time to share it with you. These shop owners train their staff to represent them in their absence, as if their own reputation was at stake. It is. Owners and employees become so tightly knit they are like family. You as a repeat customer too, become like family member to a small store. Your cares and needs are tended to as if you were a sibling. And why not? You are a large percent of why they are in business. Not a minuscule speck of importance that happens to converge with mainstream trends. To the small quaint shop, you are an artery. You are the life blood and they know it.

 

Since I brought up the subject of quaint, why do these little shops appeal to us. Why do these little shops seem to be steeped in personality? Why do you strike a report with certain shops? I’ll tell you why, because the people that own them live and breath their store. The store becomes an extension of their personality. Its perfectly natural to have an affinity to a little shop, because its a little piece of a person. In the same way you are drawn to certain people, you would be drawn to their shop. You can not have this “feeling” for a large chain store, because the person who originally created it is too distant. What personality it had, has been leached out by departments and procedures and all the red tape that makes that large purveyor profitable.

Patty Costanzo
co-owner The Linen Closet