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Lots of things have happened that have ultimately harmed these small communities.

Lots of things have happened that have ultimately harmed these small communities. A major problem is consolidation. A small town hardware store may have had access to multiple suppliers at one point. Those all merged together and ultimately started raising their prices in a "go away" sense to small time purchasers. That's made it incredibly hard to be a store. A big box store gets a lot more foot traffic and has more leverage against distributers which allows them to ultimately outprice a small time store. My hometown went through this. As a kid, it had a restaurant, a grocery store, a hardware store, and an automobile repair shop. 1 by 1 those all died. The restaurant died because the community never ate there. It became a thing where you'd literally call the owner the night before so they could prepare you a meal the next day. Otherwise they had no traffic. They were too expensive for my small town so nobody would buy a lunch there. The grocery store and hardware store died from being priced out. At one point, just to keep the shelves stocked the owner literally had to buy products from Walmart to sell at the store. No distributor would sell to them.

Posted by cogman10 on Nov 7, 2025, 4:46 PM

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pricing (E-commerce)

Lots of things have happened that have ultimately harmed these small communities.

cogman10Nov 7, 2025, 4:46 PM

Lots of things have happened that have ultimately harmed these small communities. A major problem is consolidation. A small town hardware store may have had access to multiple suppliers at one point. Those all merged together and ultimately started raising their prices in a "go away" sense to small time purchasers. That's made it incredibly hard to be a store. A big box store gets a lot more foot traffic and has more leverage against distributers which allows them to ultimately outprice a small time store. My hometown went through this. As a kid, it had a restaurant, a grocery store, a hardware store, and an automobile repair shop. 1 by 1 those all died. The restaurant died because the community never ate there. It became a thing where you'd literally call the owner the night before so they could prepare you a meal the next day. Otherwise they had no traffic. They were too expensive for my small town so nobody would buy a lunch there. The grocery store and hardware store died from being priced out. At one point, just to keep the shelves stocked the owner literally had to buy products from Walmart to sell at the store. No distributor would sell to them.

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