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Think Local, Buy Local, Be Local: Campaign
A Jump Start for Self-Reliance Drive
The ‘Think Local’ clarion call on Page One of last month’s Comment has generated much interest – enough to flesh out ideas for a Highland Perthshire business alliance that could encourage us all to become more self-reliant, and help make local enterprises more profitable.
 As Comment reported last month, Think Local campaigns have caught in the United States and a few parts of the UK by encouraging people to make much more use of their local businesses - and it is working.
Statistics show that in these areas unemployment is often lower and the businesses are less reliant on passing trade. In Staffordshire it has even been backed by several local authorities and embraces three important principles for businesses to adopt:
• to trade with each other;
• to keep the wealth in the area in order to help sustain jobs and communities;
• to become more environmentally aware and more sustainable in their business practices.
Highland Perthshire is the perfect place to adopt such ideas because it is such a cohesive community, and Comment is prepared to lead the way. By forming a business alliance under the slogan Think Local - Buy Local - Be Local there is a host of possible promotional ideas, which include, among others:
• The Think Local slogan prominently displayed on every business that subscribes to it ethos, and on its advertising material
• an automatic discount to local customers with Highland Perthshire postcodes
• a loyalty card/reward - many are doing this already in one form or another
• the active encouragement of ‘business improvement suggestions’ from customers
• possibly an extension of local credit terms from 30 to 45 days, exclusively to other locally based-enterprises
• a website in which special offers and news can be publicised
A Heartland Business Association
What may emerge is a Highland Perthshire Business Association which could be an influential and effective forum for local businesses to meet and share ideas, and to promote and represent the interests of members to the wider area, including with P&K Council and other authorities, agencies and quangos.
Highland Perthshire has long embodied the Think Local spirit but there is plenty of agreement that we can improve on it. We can be more entrepreneurial and, by co-operating, businesses can boost their individual turnovers. But the other side of the coin is that they can be encouraged to operate more efficiently, and more responsively.
Van-Spotting
Drive our roads, pause in the villages and main streets of our towns, and mark the greatly increased number of vans and trade vehicles with liveries of firms from Crieff, Perth, and Dundee and beyond which are servicing customers in the Highland Perthshire heartland. There is no shortage of local business to be done, no dearth of local customers, but there is often a scarcity of local enterprises addressing the needs in the local market.
The development of a local business forum could also help improve the poor trading experiences that people often tell Comment about.
Speak to residents in the heartland’s landward areas and you hear the horror stories of the flat rate, non-negotiable call-out fees that they face when they are driven in desperation to summon such distant traders and service suppliers. Even routine maintenance and small-fix repair visits are larded with a £150/£200 minimum charge or more, and that’s before the cost of the service is added on top.
Plugging the Leaks
Small enterprises in rural areas are all and always obliged
* to overcome the time penalties and costs of distant travel;
* to juggle overstretched work schedules to accommodate urgent service delivery
with project work already in hand; and
* to balance life/work, family/business, toil/vacation needs.
But many could collaborate more with similar service providers locally such that, through referral to a trusted ‘competitor’, they could harmonise some of thes imoeratives mentioned to the satisfaction of the needs of the local customer.
By doing this they could maintain customer loyalty and good will, benefit from opportunities to fill slack time, and even-out some of the stresses and strains associated with being a sole trader.
At the same time they will be keeping ‘the local £ sticking around’ within our local economy.
Defiant Disdain
The Think Local idea can also help service sector businesses perform better. In Staffordshire this is what they mean by helping to make them ‘more sustainable’. In Scotland what in management speak is dubbed the ‘customer interface’ is often a weak spot. Some businesses confuse service with servility and treat customers/clients with defiant disdain.
When surly or dour waiters, bartenders, counter staff, or B&B owners frontline some of our small businesses, it is a massive failure of their management and their lack of training, and it reflects badly on the whole area.
Travel beyond Scotland in Europe and North America and service sector personnel are generally characterised by highly professional competence and behaviour, which makes the experience of the consumer a pleasure, and not merely a commercial transaction. It is not a matter of making do with lowest-cost recruitment, as happens too often here.
It is evident that thinking locally, means embracing the best from elsewhere – and an alliance of businesses could help make that much more effective.
Business in the Community
 There are responsibilities that go hand in hand with being more prepared to co-operate or being proactive in helping the local pound to ‘stick around’. It is sadly undeniable that a handful of local businesses do not measure up to good business practices, and are poor at paying up – even taking advantage of being local to default on debts.
Such companies would have no place in a Highland Perthshire business alliance and it would behove such an organisation to have strict principles by which any member would be obliged to comply.
A number of local business people contacted Comment after the last issue pointing out that the bald promotion of ‘supporting local businesses’ is naive. They were critical of the type of regular exhortations that characterised Comment’s pages for over two decades (see illustrated above).
They insisted that a business’s geographical location alone does not entitle it to non critical support by local consumers, or excuse sloppy service standards or permit shoddy workmanship.
These critics made the case that Think-Buy-Be Local applies to businesses which, besides being commercial providers, are themselves consumers in the local economy. Accordingly, it is vital for the formula to work successfully that all particpating businesses must publicly indicate their good faith.
The commentators stressed that, taking the kind of steps outlined here above, coupled with demonstrating a commitment to staff development and training, local businesses can indicate their credentials to all local buyers. In doing so they can also mark themselves apart from any ‘charlatan’ operations which pretend to qualifications or capabilities that they do not actually have.
What Now?
As listed in the Comment publication ‘HP Source’ there are some 400 businesses in Highland Perthshire. The Think Local idea should be of interest to a high proportion of them. Comment will be drawing up a list of principles and a list of objectives for the Think Local project, and welcomes contributions now from anyone in Highland Perthshire with a direct interest in seeing such an idea flourish.
Early in 2010, a detailed prospectus will be circulated throughout the business community in Highland Perthshire. The timing could be perfect. It will be launched as (we are told) Britain will be coming out of recession. At its heart is a stronger Heartland – what better Christmas wish could anyone have?
For ideas and offers of help, please contact: Comment at OffiZone, Kenmore Street, Aberfeldy PH15 2BL 01887 820956 comment@wordwright.info
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