Thursday morning’s Arizona Daily Sun, our local newspaper, was bulging with full-color advertising inserts from the many large corporate stores that have become a part of Flagstaff shopping scene.  The paper was as large as Sunday’s edition usually is as pleas were made to “visit my store before the sun rises” to grab those pre-Christmas bargains.  It makes me wonder who, in their right mind, would climb out of bed to arrive at a store at 4:00 in the morning to buy a product that will probably be on sale at an even lower price closer to the big holiday?

This morning’s paper contributed even more to the supply of paper to be recycled as additional full-color inserts fell out.  This paper also included the Daily Sun’s annual “Holiday Shopping Guide” .  This insert, in the past, has given the small local merchants an opportunity to advertise at special one-time ad rates that aren’t cheap by any means but at least can be afforded by a local merchant that doesn’t have the massive ad budgets of the big boys.  But, alas, this year there were only two full sheets of ads from local merchants instead of the multiple pages from the past.  As one of these small local merchants, I am wondering if perhaps now that the Sun has access to all these big corporate ad inserts that they no longer care about ads from the smaller businesses in town?  For the past several years, I have advertised in this insert but, this year, I wasn’t even contacted.

Today has been dubbed “Black Friday” by the advertising world.  I’ve always wondered why.  The lightbulb  has come on.  Black Friday is a symbol for the death of millions of small, locally-owned, independent businesses, not only here in Flagstaff, but throughout the United States. 

No one is really to blame.  It’s all about money and the economy.  The newspapers cater to the businesses with huge ad budgets.  Consumers are easily enticed by huge ad inserts and lured by offers of bargains — whether they are truly bargains or not.  Small businesses just don’t have the funds or the opportunities to compete with these giant ad budgets. 

It’s sad but there is hope for the small businesses who can’t survive by depending on the loyalty of their friends and neighbors in their hometown.  And that hope is the internet.  The internet provides a much more level playing field for those of us who are willing to learn what is required to jump into that arena and compete with the “big boys” there.  And many of us do that very sucessfully.