Covid Journal, May 18, 2020
Time To Boycott Amazon
Amazon is disgusting on so many levels now and I think we all need to reconsider our buying habits and find a way to boycott the online retail giant.
There’s this story about how one of their VPs just couldn’t stand to work there anymore so he quit an excellent opportunity and opened up about how corrupt their practices are.
Amazon is telling warehouse workers to take a pay cut.
And the Canadian government just entered an agreement with Amazon to act as supply chain manager for our healthcare needs. WHAT. THE. FUCK?
To top it all off, Amazon pays NO taxes.
No wonder Jeff Bezos is on the tipping point of being a TRILLIONAIRE through the whole mess of this.
It’s time for a boycott of Amazon. Stop buying stuff on their site, stop going to Whole Foods, demand our local politicians back away from dealing with Amazong for fulfillment of our health and other needs.
Another Retailer Bites The Dust …
On the wave of the growing influence of Amazon comes the demise of other businesses.
JC Penney joins a growing roster of retail businesses that likely will not survive Covid.
It seems like there are four types of retail businesses today:
- ‘No box’ or no physical presence: the king is Amazon
- Large box – a business that will most likely continue after Covid
- Medium box – a retailer that is unlikely to survive or will need a bailout of some sort to continue
- Small box – local retailers.
Like or not, boycott or no boycott, Amazon will continue. Sadly, they will continue to rake in the cash because they’ve made buying pretty much everything under the sun … easy.
People don’t like hard.
It’s largely why we’re in the situation we’re in. Globalization and all of the machinery that brought us Covid brought us … easy.
Other companies that are structured with similar intent don’t have a chance compared to Amazon. Examples include Staples, JC Penney, Macy’s, Nordstrom, Sak’s, Bloomingdales, etc etc etc.
In Canada, I don’t see much of a future for Canadian Tire, Home Hardware or Indigo (which I would consider medium boxes). What they sell is largely supplied by Amazon. Optimistically speaking, there’s an opportunity for some small box retailers to fill some gaps.
Large box companies (albeit not Canadian) like Home Depot or Lowe’s might survive just because they hold an inventory of stuff that we tend to buy more on impulse. This of deck-building supplies. That’s no going away.
Small box and local retailers have to step up their game if they’re going to survive Covid, but the good news is that they will (as mentioned above) have an opportunity to fill many gaps in consumer demand.
By ‘stepping up their game’, I mean … get online FFS. And have a newsletter. And don’t just rely on Facebook pages to coordinate your ‘online’ activity. And find ways to build loyalty. And if you’re not open on Sundays, OPEN on Sundays FFS. So many local retailers have to adapt to the reality that was made a part of our lives twenty years ago let alone under today’s circumstance.
Seriously, local businesses need to step up their games and our governments need to put everything they can into getting them organized and online so that they can survive this.
If we fail to do so we can say goodbye to property taxes, commercial real estate, tourism jobs and most other ‘perks’ we get from having viable downtown areas.