AKA NEW JUNGLE LUXURY
By Douglas Evan Weiss
The word “Retail” comes to us from the Middle French word retailer, meaning “to cut into pieces,” more etymologically related to the English word “Tailor” than anything having to do with sales. The original French retailers were oriented around precision, buying only a few key goods in bulk and carefully apportioning them for their customers. They added value through product selection, negotiating routes of supply, expertise in handling.
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Shopping has changed. Dramatically. In some instances absolutely unrecognizable from just a generation previous. While the shopping experience still mostly has roots in the physical store and customer relations, the average first world shopping process itself is far removed from the days of simple grocer and client, and even further detached from the grand market bazares of previous centuries, with their crowded lanes of vendors and stalls and haggling and human connections.
Walk into any large box store in the USA and the sheer number of items and choices are impressive. Although the sterile florcent lighting and polished floors resemble a modern hospital more than an old general store, the sheer convenience and plethora of options provides a dopamine jolt to even the hardened anti capitalist.
The online shopping experience of the 21st century has completely removed the traditional boundaries of a daily shopping experience, with the metal carts and plastic baskets and challenging contact with other humans efficiently deleted. Tap and swipe and whatever you desire is delivered right to your front door. The marvels of technological disruption. One click and there is more toilet paper!
In just over one hundred years we have transitioned from the trusted General Store model where one requests specific items from behind the counter and a clerk orderly compiles your groceries, to a modern model in which every book or toothpaste or popcorn maker is readily available to us and delivered immediately. It is a marvel and a burden and a miracle and a disaster all at once.
Gertrude Stein once said “whoever said money can’t buy happiness simply didn’t know where to go shopping.”
The jungle brings its own curious shopping flair. Farmers markets have existed here for decades, but are now having a modern resurgence, and are all the rage. Local vendors set up their tables and baskets and sell direct in a communal setting, outside and unburdened by the financial pressures of brick and mortar shop models. Customers, often foreigners and tourists around these parts, can readily peruse a variety of craft and culinary options, usually along a street or in a consolidated park or square. These farmers markets, with their rugged bins of fresh vegetables and unique delights create a direct farm to customer economy that is often lost in the bustle of the ill tempered and time shortened modern world.
By employing a more intimate and direct sales model the act of shopping creates less stress upon the whole environment, which is often taxed by the transport and electricity required to keep items fresh when site of origin is far from the site of sale, which is often the case with larger retail strategies. These markets also allow entrepreneurs and crafts people to avoid a middle person and the ensuing loss of profit margin inherent in that agreement.
Here at our little surf shop in Marbella selecting specific items to represent our story and philosophy is important. The items on the shelves, tables and racks represent an intension and quality that ultimately defines what we do, and sell. Having the space simply filled with consumable products is not the goal. Being very conscious of what we are offering our customers and community is very important to us. Directly inspired by the French retailler model, more couture than super size me, curating a personally human experience with custom surfboards and specialty coffee drives the business model here.
As the old saying goes “garbage in and garbage out.”
What we decide to introduce to our customers and ultimately our communities says everything about who we are and what we want to see. Everyone has a vested interest in where they live and work. Either from an economic strategy or a social investment. We all want to be happy, safe and healthy. We all want quality return on the money we spend. And most people appreciate good service and care.
Where and what we spend our money on says everything. Are we investing in products and people we want to continue seeing? Or are we thoughtlessly throwing our money after shallow convenience? In the country side here we have fewer shopping options, but that doesn’t mean our spending power doesn’t hold sway over a larger econonomic orbit.
The scion of the giant grocery chain Walmart admitted “there is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company, from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” This statement from perhaps the largest store front retail business in the world. Even with such dominance and wealth perhaps the power ultimately lays with the average consumer and the choices they make.
If this be true than we as consumers can be conscious of our shopping choices and the reverberations our spending patterns incur. As retailers we must strive for better. Curate intelligently. Communicate clearly. Act fairly. Design thoughtfully. Invest locally.
The French designer Hedi Silamane, former creative director of Dior and Celine, once said “you have to decide where you stand. I like well made, authentic clothes, well crafted tailoring. I also like the dream and fantasy of luxury, the exception and rarity of it. I have no interest at all in fast retail. It is ambiguous.”
The hand made soap sold at the local general store, the resin filled cutting board sold at the local market, the hand crafted surfboard sold at the shop here, the freshly pressed kombucha from up the road, and the recently picked coffee bean from over the mountain range are all finely tailored, human made, and represent a jungle luxury that is defining the local shopping experience here.
We are all chasing a dream in this jungle. Chasing waves or shade or women or boys or family or money or peace. We are all chasing some allusive dream that summoned us from our homes in relative comfort, transplanted us to a foreign existence amongst exotic landscapes and bumpy roads and colorful snakes and insecure economies and fickle social arrangements. We are all navigating our relationships and our spending power freshly removed from our cultural norms. Our connection to this new jungle luxury represents our potential trajectory with this whole country and her developing economy.
Small business remains the default retail model here (although that is also slowly changing). We are human which means we shop. We can detach from our homes and histories but we all shop. Being finely judicious with where we shop, whom and how we support our vendors and communities immediately dictates the health of that business and surrounding pueblo. The opportunities to create and sell in a manner more genuine continues to fuel my love affair with this country. But that idealism is not garunteed, and we all rely on a greater eco system to support and inspire our efforts.
As Tori Spelling wisely exclaimed “bad shopping habits die hard.”
