Image is copyright of Buy Nothing Day UK

“Lock up your wallets and purses, cut up your credit cards and dump the love of your life – shopping. ”

“Saturday November 26th is Buy Nothing Day. It’s a day where you challenge yourself, your family and friends to switch off from shopping and tune into life.”

So says the blurb on the Buy Nothing Day website.  You can see where they are coming from.  Most of us would agree that there is more to life than shopping and so why not devote a day to the appreciation of a simpler, non-consumerist existence?

I’m all for devoting time to friends, family & fresh air, but the notion that it’s wrong to buy stuff is plain crass.  Especially now.  It oversimplifies a message to the point that it’s counter-productive. It hijacks an opportunity to say something useful and says something destructive instead.

How many thousands of struggling small businesses, the lifeblood of our economy and the green shoots of its recovery, rely on consumer purchases to sustain them and provide for the people that work in them? They need all the help they can get – many relying on the next few weeks of seasonal shopping to carry them through another year.

Examining the environmental and ethical impact of consumerism is a worthy agenda – but let’s keep it real.  Buy local – YES!  Buy quality – YES!  Buy from small businesses – YES!  Support ethical businesses – YES!  But please don’t think that buy buying NOTHING you will achieve ANYTHING very much at all.

Could I put a plea out to the relevant authorities to settle on a name for today?  So far, I’ve seen articles and offers heralding what’s likely to be the biggest online shopping day EVER with a confusing array of alternative ‘Monday’ labels:

• Mega Monday
• Manic Monday
• Cyber Monday
• Black Monday
• e-Shopping Monday
• e-Monday

Today has an identity crisis.

Perhaps the government quango that deals with such naming dilemmas has been recently disbanded (perhaps an Office of Naming Responsibility?).  Does anyone have a solution?

The Autumn 2010 Joules catalogue has been lying around in our house for over a week now.  It’s moved from the doormat to the kitchen to the coffee table to the catalogue pile. The trouble is, it’s still in its polywrap.  Unopened.

In my household, this is a bit of a mystery.  We’re mail order enthusiasts and all three women (daughters 16 & 19, and, erm, 40-ish other half) are hawk-eyed fashionistas.  So why has it failed to do it’s job of grabbing the reader’s attention and luring them inside?

My observed theory has two parts.  Firstly, it’s not obviously a Joules catalogue.  The clothes that the model is wearing, lovely though they may be, are not recognisably Joules.  We know the Joules signature stuff when we see it – and this isn’t it.  And as for the logo?  It’s so subtle that you’re pretty likely to miss it completely at a quick glance, given the other headlines and calls to action that feature prominently on the cover.  I think this is a missed opportunity.  Perhaps it’s a deliberate ‘trojan horse’ tactic to get the reader inside without knowing it’s Joules – in an effort to reach a wider audience.  Even so, I can’t help feeling that the value of brand recognition and customer loyalty is being ignored.

Secondly, there’s the matter of this word ‘catazine’.  Let’s face it, it’s not a word that’s bandied around much outside direct marketing circles.  It’s jargon – not common parlance.  I don’t understand the need to use it at all.  After all, when you visit Joules online you don’t see the word ‘website’ as a massive headline at the top of the homepage.  Customers are smart enough to know what they’re getting without being hit over the head with it.  Good content in a catalogue enriches the customer experience and helps reinforce brand positioning and differentiation.  I’m all for it.  But the catazine word is unnecessary – especially when it’s at the expense of branding.  In my household at least, it was clear turn-off.

Now – recent reports indicate that Joules is doing phenomenally well – so clearly they know what they are doing.  All I would say to them is this: you’ve got a strong brand and a good story to tell so don’t hide it – shout about it.

Between Tesco and Amazon, I could buy everything I need this Christmas.  I’d be confident about having huge choice, paying reasonable prices, and getting decent service.  It sounds like a no-brainer – so why would I rather sell my soul to the devil than make my holiday shopping so simple?

The answer is that I’m passionate about independent retailers.  Whether that’s local bricks and mortar or niche online specialists, I believe they’re the grass roots of our retail economy and the lifeblood of many local communities.

It’s easy to see this in our high streets and town centres.  Independent retailers are part of our national fabric, making each town distinct from the next, supporting the local economy, and absorbing the money we spend into the local community rather than syphoning it off to institutional shareholders.

And when you think about it, it’s no different online.  Specialist independent online retailers don’t inhabit cyberspace – they’re based in local communities too; providing employment, spending money, supporting local causes.  In fact, for many small communities that were previously ‘geographically challenged’ for retailing, the internet has provided a new lease of life for the local economy.

Good independent retailers – whether online, on the high street, or both – very often offer surprisingly competitive prices, excellent service, and plenty of choice.  What makes them different is the selection they make on your behalf of what to sell, the guidance of personal recommendation, the feeling that you’re really valued as a customer, and the knowledge that you’re supporting the sort of independent business that you’d never want to disappear.  For me, that’s a no-brainer.

Happy shopping!

Picture by LoopZilla