Support Your Local Business

Local businesses, like Humble Abode, LLC, make an enormous and positive contribution to the quality of life in our community. Local businesses create good jobs, and they boost the local tax base, which in turn improves our schools, our parks, and the quality of life in our town. Most importantly, local businesses are invested in our community. If you look behind the scenes at any civic activity that contributes to the common well being of the community, you are likely to find a local business person, giving their time, and often their money, to the common good. The service provided by the voluntary efforts of people who care about our community could not be replaced by any amount of government assistance or tax money. Local business people are the unsung heroes of our community. They are the leaders, the ambitious, hard working people who have ideas and act on them.

Chain stores have done a good job of convincing people that they are the least expensive, but often they are not. If you check the prices of building supplies, you will find that our own local Bliffert Lumber Co. usually has better prices on lumber and other building materials than the big chain stores. If you buy a shopping cart full of painting supplies at Hallman Lindsay Quality Paint, chances are you are paying less than if you bought them at a chain store. It has become an article of faith that the big guys are cheaper, but it just isn't that simple. Part of the reason is that the big chain stores hire researchers to study shoppers to examine which items people price compare, and which items they don't. The big chain stores will mark down the items people price compare, and mark up other items (1). It is not wise to assume that the big stores are cheaper. Often they are not.

Local business is the bridge to a more sustainable economy. These days, many of the things we buy are produced in large factories, often overseas. In industries dominated by large-scale production facilities, an enormous amount of money is required to get each business going. The creation of a single job often requires the investment of tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. We are led to believe that big business is more efficient, but in many cases smaller businesses are more efficient. This is true in agriculture, food processing, textiles, and my types of services.

Why are small businesses more efficient? Because they use more labor and less material resources. If you purchase a loaf of bread manufactured by a nationally known company with centralized production facilities, the cost of that product primarily consists of the fossil fuel and materials needed to create and run the machinery to make the bread. If you buy bread from a local bakery, the cost of the loaf of bread is based primarily on how much labor was required to make it. The environmental cost of the latter product is lower.

The same is true of other products. We are all familiar with the ongoing mechanization in this country that displaces industrial workers. Welding a car with robots requires significantly more fossil fuel than using human labor. Each increment of mechanization, on average, significantly increases the energy and materials required for production while the need for labor is decreased. In our current economy, the low cost of energy and the relatively higher cost of labor make it economically viable to use more energy to manufacture products. Small and locally owned businesses are, on average, less capital intensive and use natural resources more efficiently (4). As a result, they can help us begin to move toward a more sustainable economy.

If you are looking for a Milwaukee painting contractor please contact us today by clicking on the link below.

or call 414.299.9023 today!