Why Your Choice to Shop Small Matters More Than You Think

A few days ago, I turned down an interview with a national news programme. They were putting together a story about the impact big-box retailers like Kmart and IKEA have on small independent stores, and they wanted to hear from someone on the other side of that equation.

It wasn't because I had nothing to say. Quite the opposite. I turned it down because I was too busy being exactly the kind of retailer they wanted to interview.

They wanted to film that afternoon. But I had people in the shop, a courier coming to collect online orders I hadn't finished packing, emails waiting for replies, stock to unpack, and the hundreds of tiny things that quietly keep a small retail business moving. There was no marketing department to take over, no PR person to organise the interview, no warehouse team packing the orders while I disappeared for a few hours. Flux is me.

So I chose the people standing in my shop and the people waiting for their parcels over appearing on national television to talk about why businesses like mine are finding things difficult. The irony wasn't lost on me.

In the days since, I have found myself thinking about the questions they might have asked, and about what I would have said.

What it actually costs to compete on price

Over the years, there are comments that have stayed with me. People walking past the shop and saying that places like this are "just an expensive Kmart". Someone picking up a book and announcing to their friend that they had seen it at Kmart for $10 less. Sometimes for less than I can buy that same product wholesale from the New Zealand distributor. They probably don't realise that the person behind the counter can hear them, or that she is the person who owns the business.

I understand why price matters, right now perhaps more than it has in a very long time. Households are stretched, everything costs more, and people are understandably careful about where they spend their money. Large retailers are extraordinarily good at making things affordable.

But there is a reality behind those prices that small stores cannot compete with. A company buying tens of thousands of units has purchasing power a tiny New Zealand retailer never will. Over the years I have removed dozens, probably hundreds, of products from our shelves because larger retailers could sell them for less than I could buy them wholesale. I have learned to keep an eye on the Kmart website, because if a similar version of something appears there for a fraction of the price, continuing to stock mine often stops making sense.

That isn't bitterness. It is simply retail economics. But it does slowly change what our towns and shopping streets look like, because when independent stores disappear, something disappears with them too.

Where fifty dollars actually goes

When someone spends $50 at Flux, that money doesn't stop at our till. It helps support my family, but it also helps pay the local courier who collects our parcels, the accountant who helps with our books, the local businesses I use for supplies and services, the New Zealand distributors and makers we buy from, and the many other small businesses whose products sit on our shelves. Small businesses form little ecosystems around one another, and one purchase travels surprisingly far. Some of it travels further than our own walls.

Other things are harder to put a dollar value on. Someone might walk into Flux holding a photograph of their living room and ask me what would work on a particular console. Another might be trying to choose the right vase for their dining table, or work out how to make a room feel warmer, calmer or more finished. That kind of design advice could easily cost more than $100 an hour, but I give it freely, because interior design is what I trained in and what I love.

I love helping people make their homes feel like theirs. I love hearing how the lamp looked when they finally put it in the corner we talked about. I love when someone comes back months later to say the gift we chose together was perfect. And I love that many of the people who first walked through the door as shoppers have become people I genuinely consider friends.

That is difficult to put on a price tag.

Everything here was chosen by a person

There is another difference between a shop like Flux and a giant catalogue containing tens of thousands of products. Everything here has been chosen by a person. Me.

There isn't an algorithm deciding what should fill our shelves, and there isn't a buying department following a global trend forecast and ordering containers of whatever is predicted to sell next season. I choose pieces because I think they are beautiful, useful, interesting or enduring, usually because I would want them in my own home. A ceramic with a glaze I keep coming back to. A candle I have burned through myself. Stems that will still look right on the table in December.

I think about how they will sit alongside what we already stock, how someone might use them, what they feel like in your hand, and whether they will still look good years from now. I don't want to encourage people to replace their homes according to whatever aesthetic is trending this month. Homes aren't meant to be disposable, and I would rather help someone find one object they love enough to keep for years than convince them they need an entirely new room every season.

These decisions might seem tiny. But multiplied across hundreds of products, thousands of purchases and years of running a business, they become the character of a shop.

What you don't see from the footpath

One of the strange things about small businesses is that, from the outside, they can look much bigger than they are. There is a website. There are parcels arriving on doorsteps. There are social media posts and newsletters and displays and beautiful photographs. It can give the impression that there must be a team somewhere making it all happen.

Often there isn't. Behind many independent businesses is one person, or a couple, doing almost everything. Buying. Packing. Photographing. Bookkeeping. Marketing. Problem solving. And occasionally standing in the storeroom wondering how one person is supposed to fit all of those jobs into a day.

It isn't particularly glamorous, but there is something meaningful about it too. Every order still matters. Every person who walks through the door still matters. Every review, recommendation and return visit still matters. You don't disappear into a monthly sales report. I notice you.

This isn't really about Kmart

I don't think the answer is to feel guilty about shopping at big retailers. I shop at them too, and most of us do. This isn't about pretending there isn't a place for affordable mass-market retail, because there clearly is. It is simply about understanding that there is another choice sitting alongside it. Most of what any of us can actually control is small and close to home, and that is not nothing.

When you choose an independent shop, you are not always choosing the cheapest version of something. Sometimes you are choosing a shopfront remaining occupied in your neighbourhood, or someone answering your email who actually knows the product. You are choosing carefully selected objects instead of an endless catalogue, and designers, makers and small brands that may never have the scale to sit on the shelves of a multinational. You are choosing expertise, individuality, and a little more diversity in what our towns look like.

And sometimes you are simply choosing to keep someone's dream alive for another day.

I didn't make it onto television that evening. Instead I packed the parcels, helped the people who came into the shop, answered the emails and did the work. Perhaps that says more about independent retail than anything I could have said in front of a camera.

Running a small business is deeply personal. There is no great distance between the business and the person behind it. When Flux has a good day, I feel it. When things are difficult, I feel that too. And every time someone chooses to walk through our door, place an order online, tell a friend about us or come back again, I feel that as well.

So if you have ever supported Flux, or any independent business, thank you. Not in the generic way businesses are supposed to say thank you. I mean genuinely. You have more impact than you probably realise.

Independent shops don't survive because they can outspend, outbuy or undercut the giants. We survive because people decide there is still value in having us here.