Bad economy strikes close to home

[jaderabbit]

Today, Sweety and I had lunch together and went to run an errand afterward. "Let's go to Elephant Pharm," I said. "We need diapers."

Elephant Pharm is a locally owned pharmacy chain. It's an extremely cool place; clean and friendly, with organic choices in everything from food to baby lotion to feminine hygiene and beyond. Conveniently, it's right

Comments

[cynodd]

Sad about your pharmacy, but don't be too discouraged about the effect you had. If people can shift just 10% of their purchasing to locally-owned stores, amazing things can happen for the local economy. Every time I switch my allegiance to a locally-owned business it seems like they eventually go under, but if enough people do this then eventually they will not. And it makes a huge difference to the local economy to have locally-owned businesses. They employ more people than national chains, per dollar sold. Their money stays more in the local community. They don't get the big tax breaks of the big box stores, so their tax money helps more. It's worth spending a little extra money for all those benefits. And I used to think that the products cost more because the local companies just couldn't run as efficiently, but they have to buy the products at higher prices, too, because they don't have the purchasing power. They make much less per item than the larger stores, and yet they're still employing more people. So keep up the

[jaderabbit]

Thanks for the pep talk. We do buy books from a local store, and I feel good about that. They're a small store and often have to order something, but hey, you order it when you go to Amazon, too. The small-store folks get very excited when I buy even $60 worth of books.

I'll have to see what else that we buy can be gotten locally. I don't want to impoverish this community in search of a bargain.

[auros]

Yeah, Xta and I were in Elephant Pharm in Berkeley a few days before they closed, and noted that it looked like it was going out of business -- not many people there, lots of shelves empty. I wasn't surprised when I heard a few days later that they'd shut down.

[jaderabbit]

You know, I was surprised at how picked-over the vitamins were last time I was there. Everything else I was interested in seemed well-stocked, so I thought maybe they'd just had a sale. It's so sad. I wish they could have closed just one store.

[auros]

Well, they closed the Los Altos store about four months ago. I think that store may be part of what dragged them down. It opened right around the same time a Whole Foods opened less than a block away. I don't know if they didn't know the WF was going to be there, when they picked the site, or what. But basically, aside from the strictly-pharmacy stuff they carried, and their dry-cleaning service (you could drop stuff off and they sent it to a green cleaners, then you came back and picked it up a few days later), the WF sold virtually everything they had, for less money. (When WF is underselling you, you know you're expensive.)

[jaderabbit]

Seriously? I didn't think *anyone* was more expensive than WF.

Elephant Pharm had some really good sales, though. Once they had a Seventh Generation sale that was actually cheaper than ordering in bulk online. And they had those 10% Mom and Dad Mondays, which were helpful, although I didn't get much chance to use them.

I did know about the Los Altos store closing. I just don't understand exactly what happened. Did they not have enough credit with suppliers, maybe? Not enough capital to keep going at all? It would seem that closing a smaller store, like WC, and shipping the stuff somewhere else would have helped them keep at least the flagship store open.