It’s hard to imagine, but we are already dipping our toes into the 2025 consumer season (aka the holidays), which for me brings up a new unease regarding online shopping. Sitting in my pjs, clicking for deals from all over the planet, it’s just so easy: “click,” then wait for the item to arrive in days, sometimes hours. But this also presents me with a big question: how is all of this impacting our local businesses, and most importantly, the character of our downtowns?
I often think about the bygone days where you only had the option to shop in brick-and-mortars. The long gone Ideal Stationery in Strawberry immediately comes to mind. It served so many needs, for so many people. Having a party? Get your invites, decoration and goody bags. School project? There, you would find aisles of supplies for students and teachers. As soon as my girls could walk, I’d lose them in the store as I browsed the birthday cards, only to find them later in the Beanie Babies section. Ideal Stationery was a destination filled with neighbors and solutions. (This is just one of the businesses I miss that have shuttered, either due to the fierce competition of the giant online shopping retail brands, or COVID).
When it came to Halloween, we’d often head to the Safeway that was ’round the corner from our home on Plymouth Ave in Sycamore Park. There we would easily spend over $200 on York Peppermint Patties to pass out, and keep a few bags in the freezer for ourselves. While Safeway is a big business, it has deep roots here in Marin, with their first store opening in 1930 in downtown Mill Valley; today, there are at least eight throughout the county. Kudos to them for their website that allows for easy shopping with pick up or delivery options (as in immediate gratification), keeping the cash flowing through our community – not a faceless giant distribution site.
Fast forward to last week, when I was attempting to buy an optimistic, scent-free, blue crystal refillable kitty litter for a sweet tabby that I’m fostering. I started to type in Amazon.com, then stopped and instead went to Marin Magazine’s Best Pet Stores article. And why not? These lists are vetted by our readers and updated every year.
My first attempt to find a local pet store offered only one delivery app option, which luckily, I have, but the product was $20 more than Amazon. This would have been a perfect moment for one of those wealthy-too-busy-to-care Marinites portrayed in the parody newsletter, Marin Lately, but sadly, that’s not my bank account. I tried a couple more options and realized most of the websites are basically just online road signs. I even called a few, chatted with a nice store owner from one shop (who seemed to have a negative opinion about these “blue crystals”) and got sent to a couple voicemails, though I didn’t leave a message. Thirty minutes later, Petco, which is a large company based in San Diego with a storefront in San Rafael, was my solution. Not only do they offer a discount if I ordered online and picked up in the store, but better yet, a deep discount if I signed up for repeat delivery. My guess is people don’t decide to own a pet store because they love e-commerce, so I understand why most of these businesses haven’t invested in online shopping. It does, however, beg the question of how to navigate this conundrum of running to big online shopping sites every time we need something, versus supporting your local stores.
As we approach the holidays and the consumer season, we are interested in how you plan to shop. Do you think we should just lean into the ease and convenience of running to the big shopping retailers online, or make the effort to support our local brick and mortar? If you’re looking to get started early and need some inspiration, check out our online shopping pages. And if you have a favorite holiday shopping hack that you want to share with us, get in touch at editorial@marinmagazine.com.
