Big Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America’s Independent Businesses
by Stacy Mitchell
Summary
In less than two decades, large retail chains have become the most powerful corporations in America. In this deft and revealing book, Stacy Mitchell illustrates how mega-retailers are fueling many of our most pressing problems, from the shrinking middle class to rising pollution and diminished civic engagement—and she shows how a growing number of communities and independent businesses are effectively fighting back.
“One of the top 10 business books of the year!”—Booklist, October 15, 2007
Excerpt
IN THE LATE SUMMER OF 2005, Kepler’s, a fifty-year-old independent bookstore in Menlo Park, California, abruptly shut down. Owner Clark Kepler
explained that bookstore chains and Amazon.com had displaced so much of the store’s sales that he could no longer pay the bills. But before Kepler could file for bankruptcy, the business was swept up in an outpouring of community grief. Hundreds of local residents rallied outside the shuttered store, which was soon covered in forlorn love letters from customers describing how the bookstore had been the center of community life and what a loss it was. “Can’t the store be saved? You’re one of the main reasons I’m in Menlo Park,” read one. Another lamented, “My husband and I dated here.” Many offered money: “How about a monthly donation? I can do $50/mo . . . Give us a Web site so we can all support you. Let us help. Please.” Soon someone set up Save Keplers.com and the pledges poured in. Five weeks after it had closed, Kepler’s was back, saved by a group of local investors who vowed to return the business to sound financial footing, and numerous small donations from residents.
One of the more remarkable aspects of this community effort to save a bookstore is that many of the people who rallied—who so adored this business
that they could not conceive of their town without it and were willing to give their time and even their money to save it—confessed in interviews with reporters covering the story that they, too, had been buying more and more books online and at Target and Borders. They loved the store for its many author events and for the joy of browsing and meeting neighbors, and for the sense of community it fostered, but that devotion did not always translate into regular patronage. The store’s near closure brought into stark relief just what was at stake.
Across the country, people are coming to similar realizations about the value of locally owned, independent businesses—the beloved bookstores, century-old family hardware stores, local grocers, and funky neighborhood record stores—as well as the high cost to communities and local economies
of the corporate retailers that have grown to dominate so much of our landscape. The first part of this book makes a case for reversing the precipitous
shift from locally owned businesses to chains, while the second part charts how a growing number of communities are doing so. Since 2000, some two
hundred big-box development projects have been halted by groups of ordinary citizens, shattering the conventional wisdom that these stores are
unstoppable. These groups have succeeded by educating and galvanizing their neighbors and by learning how to harness the local planning process.
Many communities are going further: Dozens of cities and towns have adopted laws that actively favor small-scale, local business development
and limit the proliferation of mega-retailers….
Big Box Swindle by Stacy Mitchell
Copyright © 2006 by Stacy Mitchell
Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press, Boston
Reviews
“A compelling indictment of Wal-Mart and other ‘big box’ stores, based on numerous national examples”—Publishers Weekly
"[A]uthor-activist Stacy Mitchell has tossed a firecracker into the Wal-Mart-environmentalist lovefest"— Neal Pierce, Washington Post Writers Group
“In the muckraking tradition of Fast Food Nation, this is a searing indictment of the impact of behemoth retailers”—John Marshall, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, who included Big-Box Swindle in his Top Ten 2006 list
Author's Biography
Stacy Mitchell is a senior researcher with the New Rules Project, a program of the nonprofit Institute for Local Self-Reliance. A frequent speaker at conferences and public forums, she has advised numerous communities on strategies to limit chain store proliferation and strengthen locally owned businesses. Her latest book, Big-Box Swindle was described by author Bill McKibben as “the ultimate account of the single most important economic trend in our country.” Mitchell regularly contributes articles and commentaries to magazines and newspapers, and produces an acclaimed monthly email newsletter, The Hometown Advantage Bulletin. She lives in Portland, Maine.