The first in the Metrovore series: telling myself I’m feeling brave, telling you to think twice before buying online!
A few years ago, Takealot became a Thing. Takealot realised that the single biggest psychological hurdle to buying online was paying for delivery. They made delivery free (above an order value threshold), and the floodgates of online shopping opened in South Africa.
Last month, Adams, the bookshop, closed its Musgrave Centre store. A few years before that, it downsized considerably, from its expansive downstairs suite to the humble upstairs nook. Now, it’s clear that I can buy books, the same books they sold, from Takealot or Loot. Probably for the same amount of money, or less even; and for a book not in stock, I could have got it MUCH quicker online than waiting for Adams to order it. But: Adams was wonderful – a cosy, comforting, nostalgia-filled place, a place containing real, tangible books; comfortable armchairs and signs asking people not to crack the spines reading the books they aren’t going to buy; real, tangible, knowledgeable, helpful and smiling staff; and more often than not, also containing one or more friends or family members browsing the shelves.
I don’t know if Takealot (or Loot or Amazon or whatever) killed Adams; I should imagine other forces were at work too. But I strongly suspect it’s a substantial part of the story.
To me, one of the major problems with online shopping is the displacement of wealth. When you spend R100 buying a book from a local shop, sure, some of that money is paying the publisher for the book; but some of it is paying the salaries of local people who work at the shop, help clean the shop, deliver books to the shop; those people use some of that money to pay for haircuts, plumbing, having their cars serviced, having their houses cleaned. And so on, those Rands whizzing from hand to hand, generating value and enriching the city and its residents with every turn. Much less so when you online order – those Rands are enriching Cape Town and Joburg.
Next time you’re about to buy something online, see if there is someone local who will sell it to you instead. You’ll thank you for it later.
Ginger and Cocoa 