Now you have to choose which businesses will survive
My mother is pushing 70 and has had, for many years, a chronic lung condition that makes her hyper-prone to lung infections and pneumonia. Locked up in their house on the hills of Nelson my parents are fine, thankfully, if not a little more stir-crazy than usual. The decision to 'stay at home to save lives' was, for me, a fairly personal and easy decision to make. As every second Instagram post tells me at the moment: "When everything is uncertain, everything that is important becomes clear". Temporarily giving up the convenience and freedom of everyday 'normality' feels like a small sacrifice in comparison to likely losing my mother much too young.
But I also part-own and oversee a 6-month old retail store, Sollos, at The Welder in central Christchurch. As we approached what we see now as the start of this whole COVID time I was already at the edge of my tether and drained, desperately ready for a holiday and in need of some money flowing in. Everything they say about starting a business is true. It's exhilarating, awe-inspiring, and joyous, but more often than not very destructive - especially in the early stages. It is an exhausting, life-consuming, financially-draining, emotional roller coaster of a gamble in the best of conditions. We are not in the best of conditions.
Like many many businesses around the world, Sollos probably won't survive the effects of these few months - statistically speaking. To be really honest, that feels like a kick in the throat while hot vinegar is being poured over my face. For the first 10 days of our national rāhui/lockdown I was crippled with grief at the likelihood of losing everything, a mopey sack of self-pity unable to even communicate effectively with my partner about it. Slightly melodramatic? Probably. Visceral and painful? Absolutely. A lot of people are in these same sinking boats with not enough life jackets and more work to do.
So now society has to choose which businesses deserve to survive. You will choose.
Think about your nearest line up of shops. Probably at least one of them won't reopen. Which pubs, cafes, and restaurants do you want to keep? How many and which ones? Which do you only miss now and which will be missed in 6 months? What about the Zoo, or the movie theatre? Is online yoga sufficient, long term? What about your e.g. cello lessons, or that recent desire to learn te reo māori? Where do the arts show up? Each of our personal definition of 'essential businesses' will gradually expand, and if we're not thoughtful now we might just turn around to find that whatever we can't do without hasn't survived long enough for us to support them.
So again, now you have to choose which businesses should survive.
The approach I'm taking is like a spring clean. There's heaps of stuff in my house that I like having, or have kept 'just in case'. Probably half of the crap I have is simply that: crap that's no good for anyone. Useful questions to draw the line include:
"Wait, is this mine?"
"When did I last use/wear/need this?"
"Would I take this with me moving overseas?"
"Would anyone want this after me?"
Now do the same with monthly EFTPOS transactions. If you couldn't see where you spent the money, would you know what you spent it on? Some things are easy to pick (e.g. our groceries, the monthly coffee date, rent), or are obvious from their importance to us (the rug we took 6 months to choose, the Sydney wedding flights, that awesome cooking class). The rest are essentially mindless, anonymous expenses. Useful questions to draw the line include:
"What was this?" -> No idea = probably mindless
"Would I rather have the money back?" -> Yes = probably mindless
"Was this actually valuable for me?" -> No = probably mindless
"What did they do with my money next?" -> No idea = probably mindless
All those mindless anonymous transactions we used to make every day deserve to be spent on something better, or saved. Now more than ever we need to divert our support and money to things that are actually valuable, from businesses that really deserve to survive. And actually, spending more money less frequently is typically cheaper in the long run, but we don't always do it. Some examples:
A quality winter jacket vs a cheap new jacket every 6-12 months
Weekly groceries vs daily takeaways
A solid wooden desk vs flat-pack essentially cardboard cheap desks
Almost anything made of natural materials vs almost anything made of plastic
No one ever regrets buying quality, as our house has learned this month comparing our epic 1990's can opener with the cheap shitty newish one.
Then there’s the reality that many of us feel like we can’t actually afford to buy quality. For some that is genuinely the case - we have a very unequal society even in New Zealand - but a lot of the rest of us live a fairly hand-to-mouth life full of mindless purchases. We kind of can’t afford quality because we’re so accustomed to getting what we want through cheap mostly-good-enough equivalents, all of which are fed to us in our patterns of mindless consumerism. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy that we alone can change!
This sounds like a sales pitch but bear with me: At Sollos we only stock items if they are useful and beautiful, because the world needs less crap. There is too much cheap disposable crap in our everyday lives, and it's fed by that mindless consumerism that is expensive for us and destructive of the environment that sustains us. It's that same mindless consumerism that only passes about 10% of the money down the line to those actually involved in producing the items. More than 50% of our revenue goes directly to artisan producers mostly in New Zealand, and nothing we sell is designed to end up in landfill. That means that we make less money than big box shops who sell off cheap disposable crap, which in turn means that although we probably won't survive COVID-19, crap-selling companies probably will. Is that actually what you want for the world? Doesn't spin my wheels.
We have been trained to aspire for convenience at all costs, and that has enabled too much exploitation in the ways that our goods and services are delivered to us. Now, thanks to COVID, you know you can survive without convenience (maybe you can even start to empathise with those who have never had the choice to take the easy option). So you have the chance to do something meaningful about it. Even the Prime Minister is saying don’t use Uber Eats because of their terribly extractive business model.
There are a great many fledgling businesses who actively strive for a better world than we have had, and they need your money a lot more than any global mega-corp does. They also have less advertising budget to reach you than every global mega-corp. The odds are stacked against much that we believe to be of value.
What we are entering into right now truly is unprecedented in every way, as much as that has become a cliché. No one, truly no one, really knows what our world will look like in a month much less a year. But it will happen to us, whether we are active about it or not.
As the owner of a business that believes in a better way than what we have had, I implore you to stop and think about what type of world you want to live in. When the doors open, step forth into this better world and make it so with your words, your actions, and your wallet. And if that spend is at Sollos then I promise our helpful staff will to offer gift wrap it for you - online or off.