Should consumers favor local tech?

Todd I know the feeling . . . my primary email is mac.com (I guess it can be me.com now as well.) This coming from a Windows administrator. Got so many snark comments.

I think we should support our local businesses regardless of whether it is a tech company or not. If you live in a small town and don't shop there, you should expect to see empty stores at some point in the future. If you get bad service, by all means complain and if they are not addressed you should move to another service/company, but when feasible you should use technology from local companies, eat at restraunts in you local town/city, and shop at your local hardware store.

Ha Ha Ha! Good side piece, Todd. So let's see - local, rich tech company folks want us to stay local. (Mighty green of them in PC-Seattle, no?) So I guess the original concept of the WORLD Wide Web got lost in the translation somewhere along the way.

Let's just stretch this one all the way until it snaps: Boeing makes its planes here in Puget Sound, Washington so that means they should pay state sales tax on every single retail sale, right? But nope. Through a long-standing nudge-nudge-wink-wink agreement with Olympia, they fly offshore, change crews and swap checks with the buyers and voila - it's a "tax-free" deal done over international waters.

And Microsoft posts sales out of its Irish "headquarters" so it also avoids collecting and paying a lot of retail sales tax here in Washington state, among their many dodges.

All this leaves us peons paying an exorbitant 8.8%+ sales tax because the Big Guys decided THEY weren't local enough to have to pay their fair share. And they want us to do WHAT?!!

What's good for the goose is always good for the gander. When we finally start receiving sales taxes etc. from those who should be paying it, I'll be the first in line to re-start my Hotmail account.

Kevin - But MSFT isn't precisely the general store down the street in a little town nor is technology equivalent to food. Frankly, this is a silly argument for any local technology company to make - what, they only want to sell to local customers?

In a world made more immediate precisely because of technologies that collapse distance (IM, email, Facebook, blogs, Flickr, Youtube, Twitter...), the 'support your local technology company because it's local (er, aside from the support and dev people in India and the Philippines)' is one of the sillier suggestions I've read in a while.

@RobertinBellevue

you are right in what you are saying, but Airbus and others do the same thing. While this does not make it right, it is what it is. I believe we support local companies because in many cases it makes where we live a better place. From my vantage point, a strong Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks, etc. makes for a strong Seattle.

This is idiotic. I don't use Windows Live Hotmail because it SUCKS and Gmail is 10 times better. I also don't buy American cars because they suck - and no I don't support a bailout for the American car companies. Companies that produce sucky products deserve to fail.

Given the choice between 2 equivalent products, one local and one not, I'm inclined to support the local one, but otherwise I'll choose the best one.

Anyway, Google has a local office, so why shouldn't I support them?

@rick

I don't think local tech companies are making this arguement. Todd is getting feedback from people that are making this arguement (some might work for some of these companies though). I understand that Microsoft is not a general store, but they have a huge impact on our local housing values, the impact of the wealth by their employees, etc. Take a look at what is happening the Wilmington, Ohio after the DHL announcement. Again, all other things being equal I would choose a local company.

But in tech it's VERY rare that all things are equal Kevin. Gmail and Live Mail are very different products. Your other examples don't have this dynamic - a Roma tomato is a Roma tomato and, in fact, local usually means fresher and thus better. Similarly, a Dewalt drill from my local store is exactly the same as that model from Home Depot. Very few technology products are like this.

Do I look at local tech? Sure. If I needed a hosted wiki I'd look hard at Wetpaint for example.

And, finally, you ignore that these companies don't want to just sell locally. They don't centralize all of their employees here. If it makes sense tp offshore support or development, they do that. They sell all over the world as well. You're advocating an asymmetric approach - I should prefer local companies... but they don't need to give local buyers preference.

@rick - I hear you, but for my small brain I like to think that if we support our local companies we will be better off. Not that they will also support us. I realize that they dynamics in tech are different than a hardware store, but I hear people lament about having to shop at Home Depot and Lowe's because the local true value is gone. Well, the local true value is gone because people shop at Home Depot and Lowe's. When possible I try to drive to Ace Hardware in Sammamish to buy things instead of driving to Home Depot in Issaquah. I realize I likely will have little impact in this case and even a smaller impact of using local tech companies, but it feels like the right thing to do.

Great use of polls, I'd like to see you use more.

I remember a friend of mine who worked at Microsoft a few years ago tell me about a meeting he had with Bill Gates. At the end of the meeting, my friend was praised by Gates for using a Palm Pilot saying something like "glad to see someone keeping an eye on what's out there."

Hotmail charges bucks for POP3 service vs. free from everyone else. I have hotmail and gmail service. If you get flack, ask for free POP3 on HOTMAIL.

[sent from my MacBook running Windows Vista]

For me, it's always been a two-way street. If the local vendor is loyal to me, then I'm loyal in return to them. But at the point they violate my trust, all bets are off.

For example, I often encounter a lot of anti-Wal-Mart sentiment in Seattle and places like San Francisco because of the argument that Wal-Mart displaces small Mom-and-Pop business in small towns. My counter to that is to point out that in those small towns (and I lived in a small city myself), the local drugstore was a prime example of the Wal-Mart effect. That pharmacist who owned the drugstore usually drove a new car every couple of years, had an upper middle-class home and sent his/her kids to college. That was generally from charging full price for prescriptions to his friends and neighbors in that small town. There was absolutely no motivation to save anyone money when they held a monopoly in their local marketplace which tends to happen a lot when there's little or no competition. Of course, when Wal-Mart or someone else comes along, the first battle cry is that the small Mom-and-Pop gets wiped out because of real competition.

Conversely, the unintended benefits of Wal-Mart's scale and volume purchasing now allows it to offer its new $4.00 generic drugs that benefit those who need it the most. And then there are also new businesses that actually benefit from being near a Wal-Mart by serving the same demographic. Even more surprising are the people I run into at Wal-Mart, Sam's Club and CostCo who decry those big box stores but can't seem to resist the bargains.

Let's face it. I came to the grim realization that Americans as a whole are incredibly cheap. Not frugal - cheap! They want the best and they want it now and they want it cheap. At some point that model may be overdue for a rude awakening as well.

Con'd in the next comment...

Con'd...

Perhaps we may be better served having a real discussion about free markets, growth and competition. Those huge corporations weren't always huge and if you believe that everyone wants what you have, why would you want to limit your growth? That said, I do understand some people believe in staying small as a conscientious choice.

Oh - and here's a counterargument: So since we're on the subject of localization, does that also mean if we use all Microsoft products locally, then Microsoft will only hire locally instead of outsourcing anything? (Caveat: Loaded question!)

Umm, aren't these email accounts free? How am I 'supporting' Microsoft or Google by using their free email? Am I SUPPOSED to click on all the spam they bring in? (My gmail is FULL of spam and unusable). Am I expected to 'click here' or respond to Charlene12345's IM because she wants love? (Yahoo mail has that, umm, feature.) That's why I go ahead and pay a few bucks for an account that has its own sucky problems, but at least I'm not slumming with these generics which just throw ads my way.

Todd, this is a great idea--keep it up.

Thanks for the comments, everybody. Keep 'em coming. Hot Button will be a regular feature of the site. Feel free to e-mail me with any suggestions for topics. toddbishop@bizjournals.com

RobertinBellevue: So instead of that drugstore owner making enough money to buy a new car and send his kids to college (the nerve!), we've got minimum-wage, no-benefits drones working so that fat-cat executives and Wall Street investment bankers can own multiple houses and personal jets.

Yeah, that's a great argument.

Well BigYaz, the choice is always yours. You can choose to be Sam Walton (who started off with one store) or you can choose to be a "victim." It's called America. Moreover, it's also been proven that a large majority of the jobs are entry-stage jobs that most people entering or re-entering the job force get into and stay at for a short while until they get back on their feet to get a better job of their choice (also called America).

So with your logic, if you were the local drugstore owner and did incredibly well and grew and grew (which also DID happen with Walgreens and Rite-Aid), you'd still believe you could run the business the same way?

Todd - maybe you might consider a new discussion to cover where this one's been going so we can stay on topic with whether to buy local or not?

Microsoft and Google aside, how about just going local for the win?

Going local doesn’t need to be viewed as some civic duty. The best product or service should be your goal, but why not embrace your interests and take advantage of the asset you hold by being just minutes away from the management team? As the CEO of a web company, I love local customers because we don’t have to travel half way around the world to meet them and we definitely want to have close relationships with some of our customers since its good for product development. Did you catch that? You are extra special to us because we can have coffee with you and maybe even get to see you in your natural habitat using our product. Smart companies will trade on that asset. In our case, we give extra attention, extra support, and (cha-ching) discounted pricing for local customers when it makes sense.

Don’t believe it? I’m happy to buy the coffee if you want to talk about how LiquidPlanner can help your organization.

This is a great idea. We should make sure to only use math and science that was invented locally too.

Typical thin-skinned Microsoft...

Is it really "support" to blindly consume products just because they are produced by companys headquartered locally? I like to think that by choosing the best product available for my need, I'm encouraging all the competitors in that sector to produce the best possible product. If you're using a sub-par product or service just because it's from a local company, are you really doing them any favors, or are you artificially sustaining a poor design that is going to fail them in the global market they are aiming at?