Only four percent of Americans have never purchased anything online. But perhaps what is even more impressive is that means 96 percent of Americans have made at least one online purchase in their lives, and 80 percent have made one in the last month alone. This is according to research from information and technology platform BigCommerce published on the financial news website The Street last month.
Online shopping is commonplace, but the effects of its popularity are reaching home. Two businesses (Vashon Island Music and Dova Silks) have closed in the past month, and both have cited a changing retail landscape as a contributor to their departure from Vashon’s town core. Both businesses are also retaining an online marketplace. Rebecca Wittman’s The President of Me is also closing, and while she cites wanting to spend more time with family and friends as the reason, she too will maintain an online presence.
And while the online shopping machine’s impact is being felt more heavily on Vashon as businesses close, the impact began years ago. In 2014, Giraffe owner Priscilla Schleigh said it’s “hard to compete” with online retailers. That same year, Vashon Island Music’s Karen Eliasen felt especially frustrated — she said shoppers would take pictures of CDs and barcodes in her store and discuss instruments, only to tell her later what they ended up purchasing online.
“More than ever, I feel like an Amazon showroom,” she said.
More recently, when Dig Nursery’s Sylvia Matlock announced she was selling the property last year, she too talked about the difficulty of having people see her products and later buy them online.
But it is not just online shopping that is to blame. Most island businesses rely on summer tourism to stay profitable. In the winter, business is tough. Dova Silks owner and designer Dorothy Dunnicliff said in an article this week that “this past winter was particularly tough.”
With such a limited tourist season, the shopping responsibility during the dark and cold months falls on islanders. But there are not enough islanders to keep the local businesses profitable and functioning.
It has been said a million times, and it will be said one million more, but the importance of buying locally when possible cannot be overstated. Islanders pride themselves on not having big-box stores, and the only way to live with that fact and keep a vibrant town core is to utilize what is here. Let’s make an effort to forgo the seeming convenience and discount prices and pay a bit more for something one of a kind and maybe even locally made, or the old saying, “You don’t know what you have until it’s gone” will be a lesson we have to learn the hard way.
