Online stores will hurt economy; kill small businesses- John Samuel
Speaking on the radio programme Umoja, on ZBVI 780 AM on Thursday August 25, 2016, retired civil servant and businessman John Samuel said several local business owners have been raising the issue; and although consumers are very price conscious, there is a social responsibility that comes with being a consumer.
“I had a discussion with other business operators and even online we should be careful about our economy and we also have to be careful as consumers,” he said.
“The online business front is sort of removing the borders from commerce and small economies can suffer tremendously from that because small retail fronts cannot compete with online commerce. Over time they will disappear!”
Samuel pointed out that while consumers may argue that they got the product much cheaper, in the next 15 years the government will not collect the taxes because there are no businesses and young people will not be able to secure jobs.
“I’m not sure if we come to realise how much of a challenge this can create for us, all we know is we can get it cheaper.”
Matter must be addressed urgently
Host of the show, Cromwell Smith aka Enju Enka also added his voice to the matter, saying it is also of “tremendous concern” to him as well.
“What concerns me most is our local people, management, and Government are not sitting down together to deal with that particular issue. They need to have a conference to defend our economy against this fight. Because our lives depend on this, it is a very serious matter.”
He said attention must be given to this matter right away.
“One of the avenues that I think needs to be discussed is that government must find a way to enable the local retailer to compete with the online businesses.”
In addition, the two pointed out that when assistance is needed in one form or the other, the very same local stores are the ones they come to and not the online stores like Amazon and even neighbouring St Thomas, US Virgin Islands where persons prefer to shop.
.png)
.png)
.png)
Follow Us On
76 Responses to “Online stores will hurt economy; kill small businesses- John Samuel”
The only exception is Clarence Thomas Ltd - Michael Thomas manages to sell items at the same cost or sometimes lower than Home Depot in STT. The service is great. I hope he branches out into food. Perhaps he could also offer lessons to our other rip off locally and foreign owned BVI businesses.
So when The Haves want to come tell The Haves Not to shop local tell them to give us value for our dollar and we will or Walmart, Amazon and the others will continue to be our best friends. I just spent $36.00 for a part on Amazon and they wanted to charge me over $100.00. Wow
Well John, look at this as an opportunity and start a courier, shipping or brokerage company. Then you can try to jack up the import fees as much as you want. So that when this type of greed drives you out of business you can't say it is because people are not buying local services.
And can somebody please tell Rite Way to stop hiking up prices when an item gets popular? If I buy a biscuit today that costs $2 and the biscuit suddenly become popular by Friday the same biscuit costs $10. And then nobody wants to buy them so they stay on the shelves and spoil. I mean I'm a supporter of capitalism and businesses have a right to make a profit but d@mn! What's next? Should I put my blood type on my credit card so you can know what type you're getting when you take it? Should I also tell you which arm, leg and kidney is my favourite so you can go with those too? Or maybe you'll just like to have first born daughter?