Letter to | the Editor

To the Editor:

Your column on on-line marketing was spot on. I prefer to shop in local stores whenever possible. I’ve found that if they don’t have a particular item they can get it in just a few days.

I don’t care how good they claim online shopping security is, I don’t trust it. Anything one human mind can devise another human mind can devise a way around. While I do avoid shopping online, I do a bit of mail-order shopping. I get most of my phonograph records for my collection from a dealer in Richmond, Va., and small, arcane items from Johnson Smith, Inc., which has been in the mail-order catalog business since before World War I.

You mentioned that Sears is in trouble and has sold off its iconic brands. ... One of the biggest business blunders in recent times occurred in about 1995 when Sears killed off its catalog division. I thought it was a blunder at the time and said so. That catalog was what made Sears-Roebuck a household name a century ago and was an ideal application for online retailing. Had Sears kept its catalog division, it would have had at least a five-year running start on its online competition, would now be a lot bigger than Amazon, would pretty much own online retailing business, and would be in fat city. Instead Sears is about dead because maintaining big stores in huge malls is just too expensive (big, stand-alone stores are also expensive, but less so).

While shopping online is easy, handy and convenient, it is detrimental to local stores and businesses; so is running up to Omaha to buy things. As you noted, if we don’t support our local businesses they’ll go away.

Bob Ackley, 

Emerson

Editor’s Note: Bob added this to his letter: “The problem with our economy is that budget is balanced by people who aren’t.” –Alfred E. Neuman.