My friends and I have a similar conversation about our miniature hobby.
Online retailers get to offer massive discounts, and don’t pay taxes to boot. The brick and mortar stores are going under and nothing is replacing them because they can’t compete. That in turn shrinks the community, which as you can guess, causes more closures.
I love shopping online and saving cash. However, is this type of business going hurt location based retail to the point where there is no physical competition? Leaving only a handful of large international retailers to sell those “got to have it now” purchases may not be a good long term strategy.
These B&M stores provide entry level employment to millions of Americans. (Some even born here and speak English) Without those jobs and experience available to our job market will the work ethic be even worse than it is today if online stores push more small retail sellers out of business?
Any small business owners what to offer their point of view?
You need to change with the times. Brick and mortar businesses in the digital age are a thing of the past. More than half of sales of books at Amazon are digital. Most music now sold is digital. The time will come where other products will be shipped from warehouses abroad. Only limited business such as food distribution will remain at the local retail level. It’s called progress..
Small business owners have to unite to help lower taxes.
They’re just patsies if they do nothing.