Before You Go Virtual

Pete's, for years a Walla Walla retailer where many bought their winter gear, went out of business a few weeks ago. Most merchants plan months ahead when it comes to stocking up for holiday and winter sales. Owner Hal White said he simply couldn't hang on until there was certainty about the future of Ski Bluewood, which is scheduled to open this week.

But there was another reason he couldn't hang on. Aside from the sluggish recovery, he said Main Street retailers like him are a dying breed, circumvented by manufacturers' direct or indirect online sales, which require shipping but no big overhead costs like a downtown space and all the bills that come with it.

Another retailer across the street, Lost Boardroom, specu­lated that Pete's space will probably be taken up by a wine tasting outlet, the latest in a handful of tasting rooms to take over the space of merchandise retailers in downtown Walla Walla recently. There is nothing wrong with tasting rooms. In Waitsburg, we could use a couple of them to complement the Whoop and the jimgermanbar. You're talking smart food industry syn­ergy. A tasting room or two on the burg's Main Street would fill some of the empty retail space and create another reason for visitors to come to town, making a natural stop on a circuit that already has Dumas Station, Dayton Wine Works and will soon include Reggie Mace's Mace Meadworks.

But a healthy downtown, or for that matter a healthy com­munity, cannot thrive without merchants who are open dur­ing regular shopping hours and sell a variety of products that make a trip to Main Street more of a one-stop proposition, the owner of Lost Boardroom said. Unless they sell exactly the same items, retailers thrive on being located close together. It's the reason strip malls sprout up around larger regional malls.

Our point is that online shopping may bring some imme­diate savings to shoppers' pocketbooks, but long term, it's a choice that may come back to haunt you like the Ghosts of Christmas.

As we've advocated in these pages before, shopping lo­cally has so many benefits that outweigh the sometimes higher prices you pay for its convenience. The money from your online or big box store purchases goes to the shareholders of that company, wherever or whom­ever they may be. It does absolutely nothing to help pay for local city services, bring visitors to town or sustain the avail­ability of local shopping. We're not even mentioning the look and feel of boarded up storefronts.

Sure, we know you simply can't get everything in Waits­burg or Dayton. For a number of items, you have to drive further or shop online.

But before you buy into a virtual Christmas, think again. We encourage our readers to shop for their items here first: buy the gifts you can in the valley before going further afield. You would be surprised what a trip to your local store can yield. Every year, merchants put a lot of their stock into the holiday shopping season. It's a bit like harvest. If they don't do well, they'll have a wait a whole year to make up for it or, worse, contemplate closing down altogether. We know Christmas kickoff traffic was down in Dayton this year because visitors feared icy roads that didn't materi­alize. If you were one of them, please come back some time before you've completed your holiday shopping list and stop in Waitsburg on the way. Both towns are decked out and stocked up for the season, ready to welcome you with open arms, whether you're hunt­ing for presents or just want to come out for a bite to eat in a friendly place. To make that easier for readers, we're including a brief local shopping guide in this edition (page 3). Before you fill your shopping cart online, think about where your money is going and where it could be going. Would you rather give the profit to faceless corporate shareholders or to the local merchant you know by name, the one who puts it back into your community?