Gov. Richardson Asks New Mexicans To Shop Locally

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/12/03/ap/business/main5882459.shtml

Gov. Richardson Asks New Mexicans To Shop Locally

Gov. Richardson Unveils 'shop Locally' Campaign To Keep More Money In Community

(AP)  ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson on Thursday urged New Mexicans to spend $25 at each of two local stores this month, an initiative that could have a $27 million economic impact on the state in December.

Richardson, who spoke at a restaurant in Albuquerque's Nob Hill shopping area, said that for every $100 spent locally, $68 stays in that community. That compares to $43 remaining in the community for every $100 spent in national chain stores, he said.

Because small- and medium-sized businesses are prevalent in New Mexico, shopping locally would help the state's budget shortfall, Richardson said.

"This is a way we can pump tax money, gross receipts funds, into our state and at the same time make a difference and help our local businesses," he said.

While Albuquerque, Santa Fe and cities around the country have asked shoppers to spend their dollars at local stores, New Mexico's "$25 2 Main Street" campaign makes it one of few states - alongside Vermont and Utah - to offer a statewide push, said Stacy Mitchell, a senior researcher at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

"This is a growing movement. Now, it is on the minds of consumers in a way that we haven't seen in the 10 years that we've been following and tracking this stuff," Mitchell said. "More and more people are seeking out local businesses."

Since the first local shopping initiative in Boulder, Colo., was created in 1998, the movement has grown to about 130 groups urging local buying nationwide that represent about 30,000 independent businesses, Mitchell said.

The Institute for Local Self-Reliance conducted a survey of 1,100 independent business owners in January. It found that for November and December 2008, a period when all retail sales had fallen about 10 percent nationally compared with the previous year, independent stores saw sales decrease 5.3 percent.

In communities with buy-local campaigns, independent stores saw sales fall only about 3 percent compared with the same time period a year earlier, Mitchell said.

Mitchell said though Santa Fe recently lost Locals Care, a nonprofit formed to encourage residents to shop locally, it still has Santa Fe Alliance, a national model for promoting independent businesses. Strong programs also are found in Bellingham, Wash., Portland, Maine, and Austin, Texas, she said.

In Arizona, Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon and U.S. Rep. Harry Mitchell also recently urged residents to make a third of their holiday purchases in local stores.

Kimber Lanning, executive director of Local First Arizona, said consumers are starting to understand how their shopping habits affect their communities.

"People are starting to understand the connectivity; the simple math of buying it cheap is not cheap in the long run. We lose jobs and we're exporting wealth," Lanning said.

Shipping costs going up...surprise!

What do you know? Fedex announced a 4.9% rate increase for 2010. And, then, shockingly, UPS matched it exactly. As I recall, last year, it was UPS who announced a 5% increase, which was matched by Fedex the next day. (Whatever happened to the old Sherman Anti-Trust Act, by the way?) 

Anyway, what's funny is that energy prices dropped precipitously in Fall, 2008. And the recession has given companies increased purchasing power in other categories as well. In other words, I seriously question a 5% increase in costs.

At Made In New Mexico, we didn't raise our shipping rates for 2009, eating that 5% rise. I'm not sure we can do it again for 2010, although shoppers sure would like to have $0 shipping.

Remember: When you include the cost of the box, biodegradeable packing peanuts, and the labor to pick, pack, and ship the order, most online retailers don't even break-even on the shipping they charge you for.

We'll check it out after the Xmas rush is over.

Oh, and then there's Green

One more thing on the Buzzword topic. Thinking people need to dig deeper into the Green Building thing. The Green Building craze is supposedly coming from the grass roots, but isn't all the buzz now coming from Realtors, Contractors, and the newspapers that carry their ads?

OK, sorry about the cynicism; maybe the well-meaning grass roots started the craze. But the develoturds (developers) latched onto it as a way to prolong the inevitable bottoming of the Real Estate Bubble a bit longer.

Here are two facts the "Build New, Build Now, and, oh yeah, Build Green" crowd seems to forget to mention:

The ULTIMATE Green Building technique is renovating an existing building, NOT building a new one...even if that new one is built with the latest energy conservation technologies. If we're serious about promoting conservation, we need to encourage the renovation and expansion of our many nice, existing buildings in New Mexico. Renovation takes far less energy overall than building from scratch.

If you MUST build, New Mexicans have been building Green for centuries, using mud bricks. Adobe construction doesn't kill as many trees as wood frame construction, and adobe walls are very energy conserving. Let's promote it with training and tax breaks.

The original "Sustainable", "Fair Trade", "Buy Local," and "Green"

At a meeting in Taos this morning, those now-too-common buzzwords "Sustainable," "Fair Trade" "Buy Local" and "Green" were thrown around once again.

I'm all for the concepts generally recognized as being associated with these buzzwords, but I sure am sick of hearing them and reading the words themselves. And the fact that often those touting these buzzwords can't see the forest for the trees.

I felt compelled to point out to this group of well-meaning folks those obvious facts we all forget from time to time:

Sustainability: The original Sustainable economy is making and selling stuff in your own backyard, figuratively speaking. Moving commodities and finished products dozens or hundreds of miles instead of thousands is inherently Sustainable and Green. Encouraging manufacturing within New Mexico should be tops on anyone's Sustainability agenda.

Fair Trade: The Fairest Trade is Internal Trade, within our borders. Our country obviously has environmental, labor and consumer-protection regulations which are far more stringent than those in so many countries where consumer goods are now mass produced.

Buy Local: Just those words don't quite go far enough if all they mean is "guilt tripping" consumers towards buying Chinese stuff in a locally-owned store rather than at Walmart. On the other hand, just encouraging production of New Mexico commodities, food and goods to be sold out of state or in chain stores isn't Buy Local either. Rather, the ultimate is locally-owned stores selling locally-produced products: THAT'S Sustainable, Fair Trade, Buy Local and Green, all in the same breath.

I'll throw out some ideas on how state government can encourage domestic production of New Mexico in a later post. It's not that hard.

OK, now you're thinking, "Yeah, well he's an owner of a company that sells New Mexico products, so I he's being self-serving." OK, I can't look impartial, so I won't even try. Sure, I'll profit if more NM goods are produced and sold. But, you could also look at it another way: I'm saying "bring on competition." Yep, I'm all in favor of more stores selling more New Mexico products. Fair's, fair. Now, maybe 3 stores in the same block all selling the same stuff isn't such a great thing in a tourist town like Taos or Santa Fe, but, even then, if it means 3 times as much NM stuff gets made; which it wouldn't.

Tell us about New Mexico products you know about

Know of a unique New Mexico product that might sell well to tourists and transplanted New Mexicans? Made In New Mexico is always seeking more NM products. To learn how to become a vendor, click here.

Or, even if it's not something you feel would sell well at Made In New Mexico, post a comment here so that others can hear about it.

You might also check our Links on the left, which include a link to KOAT-TV's 2008 series "What's Made In New Mexico."

Recession isn’t stopping New Mexicans from quaffing local lagers

Nice coverage of how brewpubs and microbrewers in New Mexico are seeing strong growth. NM has many fine beers and its wine industry is also growing. (Nuevo Mexico was supposedly the first location in the New World where wine was produced; Spanish settlers brought grape seeds and winemaking skills here nearly 400 years ago...take THAT California!)

New Mexico wine is one of the most-requested souvenir items at the state's gift shops. Unfortunately, tourists who want to buy New Mexico beer and wine can do so at their hotel or resort's gift shop in most cases. And they can't do it at a gift shop in the ABQ, ROW or SAF airports, either. They can't even find NM beer and wine at shops on the historic plazas in Albq., Santa Fe, Taos, or Mesilla.

No, unlike other states, to find NM beer and wine, a visitor hoping to take home a bottle of wine or a six pack of beer must know and remember to leave the tourist area and go stand in line at an Albertsons, Smith's or a package liquor store. In other words, they need to REALLY want it, enough for it to be worth the hassle to get it. What are the chances?

How much in sales do our state's breweries, wineries, and tourist gift stores lose from the fact that its darned inconvenient for tourists to buy their products in our great state? How much income from liquor excise and gross receipts sales taxes does our state lose...during a critical budgetary era?

The fact is, for a gift shop to be able to sell New Mexico beer and wine, it needs a full-on retail package liquor license. Only problem with that is, the number of those licenses was "frozen" many years ago. The result is that the only way to get the license is to buy one from an existing retailer who is going out of business. Cost? $500,000 and up. No mom'n'pop tourist shop could afford that just to supply a few bottles of wine or beer every day.

Result: compared to other Western states, "souvenir" sales of New Mexico wine and beer to tourists are practically unheard of. And our state's wine and beer industries are therefore growing far more slowly than in surrounding states. Even Oklahoma has more wineries than New Mexico! Yes, I said, "Oklahoma!"

We're working to get the law changed so that small retailers could get a restricted liquor license that would allow them to sell up to 4 bottles (or 4 six packs) of New Mexico-produced beer and wine per day to any one customer. The beer and wine could not be sold chilled, and it could not be consumed on-site. In other words, its specifically targeting tourists who want to buy a few bottles to take home as souvenirs.

Senator Carlos Cisneros, D-Questa, and Rep. Bobby Gonzalez, D-Taos, sponsored a bill to do just that in the 2009 state legislative session. The bill passed the Senate 33-7, but the chair of the House Business & Industry Committee, Debbie Rodella, D-Espanola, wouldn't let it come to a vote in her committee. So the bill died.

We're going to try again in 2010, but the short session requires that only bills sponsored by the governor's office can be introduced.You can read last year's bill at
http://www.nmlegis.gov/Sessions/09%20Regular/bills/senate/SB0403.pdf