The Local International Market
2024-01-23
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When we journey out to town to do our weekly grocery shopping, we often go to a certain international market in the city. The market is located near the intersection of many local Asian communities, and it sells food and wares from all over Asia, particularly China and Vietnam. We find all sorts of ingredients there that are otherwise quite rare in the American Midwest.
Almost any retail space in these parts, and in suburban America in general, focuses on presentation almost more than the products themselves. Floors and walls are meticulously scrubbed and polished; fancy light fixtures adorn the ceiling; bright colors pop out at the customers; furniture is coordinated in a specific style. Shelves matching the decor of the space display products that are carefully arranged into eye-catching arrangements. The bulk of store planning goes into how a space is going to look to the customer, the common wisdom being that if a customer is enticed by the atmosphere of a store, he is more likely to spend money.
This international market notably breaks that consumerist trend. The tile floors, while not actually dirty, are worn and scuffed. Black rubber marks betray years of shopping carts rolling by. The ceiling is plain, with exposed rafters and long fluorescent tubes lighting the shop floor. Products are organized but not arranged in elaborate displays; on the contrary, most of the kitchenware is simply placed on shelves in simple stacks, not dissimilar to how they'd be stored in a home kitchen. Packages are plain, and some product is sold directly out of the shipping boxes they arrived in.
The well-worn and well-loved nature of the store's equipment indicates how heavily it is used--and by extension how useful it is. The goal isn't to dazzle consumers with feel-good marketing tricks; the goal is to sell goods that ordinary people can rely on. The base amount of maintenance is performed to keep machines running and food reasonably sanitized, and remaining overhead is kept to a minimum.
We now buy several ingredients there, including ingredients sold elsewhere like local vegetables, because their low overhead helps keep their retail prices low too. Other grocery stores change their layouts every few years, redesign logos, launch continual marketing campaigns, make commercials and jingles, upgrade registers and reward systems, and endlessly rearrange products. All of that costs money, and all of that is paid for by inflated prices. This international market forgoes all that extra effort, because the breadth and low cost of their selection is all the marketing it needs.
I don't understand modern society's obsession with keeping everything fresh and pristine. Lawns must be perfectly manicured, with new beds of flowers planted every year. We replace our smartphones every year, and those smartphones must never have scratches or scuffs. Fashionable clothing changes with the wind, and the clothing we have cannot have even a single loose thread. Any surface coated with shiny paint must be polished to a mirror sheen and every tiny defect must be removed. It takes a huge amount of resources to constantly update every part of our lives--resources that we end users ultimately pays for with unnecessary purchases at inflated prices. And when all that work is said and done, we find the products we have aren't really any better than they were before. They certainly don't make us any happier.
I think all industries could take a hint from that international market. Many things in life are perfectly suitable just the way they are. "If it works, it works", as the saying goes. There's no need to change things simply for the sake of change. Doing so will only waste resources that could be used to make more of what we need, at a better quality and a lower price.
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[Last updated: 2024-10-06]