Finding Significance In Small
Cas Hardware - a small hardware retail business in my neighborhood - closed its doors recently after 41 years. It had become a fixture of the Andersonville community and was a place where “the management” was folks you could get to know, who would be on hand to answer your questions, give advice if you needed it and take care of any purchases you needed to make.
It felt, in this day and age, like a throwback. It was small, it was personal and it was for the community. It wasn’t about scale. It wasn’t about the next big sale. It wasn’t about liquidity events and exits. It was the type of business that many of us above a certain age grew up on, in the era before Big Box and e-commerce.
Many of the stores in the Andersonville community are like that, or at least aspire to retain the best elements of that. No small feat given the allure and challenges of the new retail era.
But this post isn’t about that. Before I get too far down nostalgia lane, my point isn’t to suggest a rose-tinted longing for yesteryear. While we’ve unquestionably lost (in many ways) what made retail in the “old days” special, there’s much that we’ve gained as well. No question about it. So this isn’t going to be a post lamenting ‘New Retail’ in any way.
No, instead, what struck me, what I was more drawn to and nostalgic about, was the philosophy and ethos of small businesses such as Cas Hardware.
Businesses that were small by design and by intent. Businesses that existed to serve a purpose within a community. Businesses that resisted the allure of scale and broad commercialization. Businesses that meant something more than simply money. Businesses that were meant to endure until it was time to, well, pack up and head home.
That philosophy isn’t dead, I know, but there are many more temptations today to go for the big kill. And I fear that those young adults for whom that might not sit well, aren’t seeing that there’s an alternate path as well. Or they’re being seduced to become something that doesn’t mean as much to them.
I know what you’re thinking. I sound like an old fool. Retail economics have changed, and the world today is a much different place than it was even a couple of decades back. Yes, I know, it’s the inevitable churn of development and commerce and there are many aspects that we simply can’t fight. You’re right about that.
But I still believe that there’s room for small, for service, for personal commitment. Certainly, our expectations may need to be adjusted but I suspect that that has always been influenced more by external forces than internal ones, if that makes sense.
Many times, I think we’re more caught up by the glamor of scale and size and we confuse that for significance. In its own special way, I think there’s significance in small.
I hope we don’t forget that.
