News that several local businesses have either shut their doors or have plans to do so soon has caused shock and concern among many in our community.

Wilson-Holder Drug Company, Town & County Farm & Hardware and Turning Pages Books & More are among some of latest to either close or announce a pending closure.

After the initial feeling of remorse for the town, the business’ owners and the employees who worked there, a sense of guilt came.

What could I have personally done to help those businesses?

Wilson-Holder was rarely if ever a stop for me, though now that it’s gone, I wish I’d made a more intentional effort to support the business.

Ditto for Town & Country. A few years ago we purchased a swing set kit and the lumber to make it from them, but again, it was not a regular stop.

Turning Pages was, at least for me, a place that several years ago was a good stop to shop for books and gifts. Sadly with two children and a busy work life, my personal time for pleasure reading is limited. Still, could I have invested more by shopping there and spending money locally?

Absolutely. I bet many of us could raise our hands to that question.

The truth is my own spending at each of these businesses may have only been a drop in the bucket to what each needed to be successful and remain viable.

But collectively, if more and more of us made an intentional effort to support the kinds of businesses we want — and need — in Natchez those drops could add up to a bucket of success.

Now, driving down the streets, closed storefronts evoke memories of what’s been lost and perhaps a sense of regret.

But we don’t ever miss things that matter to us until they’re gone. And we often do not think about the causes until it’s too late.

Natchez is like much of America these days. We’re in a transition in which technology drives an increasing amount of our commerce.

UPS, Fed-Ex and the U.S. Postal Service are delivering more and more things we all buy online and aside from the local salaries for that distribution, the dollars we’re spending go elsewhere to support another community.

That happens in almost every aspect of the community. When people drive out of our community to shop or make purchases online for goods that can be purchased locally, it hurts our community.

Many of you know I like to tinker with old cars. Some parts simply cannot be found locally, but for those that can, I try my best to purchase from the NAPA Auto Parts store in Natchez as it’s locally owned and operated. It makes sense to me to support our community when and how we can.

Often our spending outside the area doesn’t seem harmful, until you stop to think about what’s happening.

Businesses are often encouraged to use social media and other means to market their businesses. And while those options certainly have a place, many business owners may not realize that spending local dollars with those out-of-town, global companies simply takes money out of our community. That harms local businesses like our newspapers, locally owned radio and magazines.

Technology in the not so far away future could drastically change our economy.

One of our biggest employers, Walmart has already managed to reduce staff by the use of the “self- check” lines. I avoid them at all costs.

Although we occasionally shop at Walmart, we spend the vast majority of our food budget at locally owned Natchez Market, where the checkout people are human, not machines.

Technology could also drastically impact education. Can you envision how public elementary and secondary education could change if the use of technology began reducing the number of classroom instructors? Technology could bring the world’s best, most engaging teachers into local classrooms. The local teachers’ economic impact would greatly diminish.

The same could happen with large, private industries. Jordan Carriers, the highly successful, Natchez-based trucking company could be drastically changed if fleets of self-driving trucks become economically feasible.

Some of that technology is inevitably coming soon, but until then, we can all help influence the businesses here by shopping more intentionally today.
Kevin Cooper is publisher of The Natchez Democrat. He can be reached at 601-445-3539 or kevin.cooper@natchezdemocrat.com.