OPINION: It has been almost five years since I took the punt and decided to open a brick and mortar store in the regional city of Bunbury, Western Australia.
A place with the most ridiculous amount of potential that also happens to house some of the most determined and forward-thinking creative business people I’ve ever come across.
We have a proactive business gang trying to get things going, events popping up and attracting a bunch of people to the city and a vibrant little small bar and foodie scene starting to emerge.
Unfortunately none of this matters - but I’ll get back to that.
At the end of 2010 I got really inspired and thought that Bunbury was the perfect spot to introduce street wear to my country homies, and boy did it pay off.
That first year was crazy.
We were running out of stock, had crew ordering things from us from all over the country and internationally.
I was giving myself high fives every day, it was crazy.
This lasted until 2013, when it got a little more difficult to keep people excited.
But that’s pretty natural, everyone likes new things – so starting out is easy, it’s once you’re old it gets harder.
It was all good though, we kept plugging along, throwing parties, settling into our little world we had created.
That’s when I wrote that article that p**sed people off about online shopping and the need to support your local.
I still stand by that - but I’ve opened an online store, just to annoy locals and further prove my point.
Which resulted in us having to find a bigger store and boom, Maker+Co was born. (weliketomaker.com).
We now ship a bunch of stuff worldwide and the locals unfortunately are always the last to get in for a new releases and are the first to miss out.
This is great for me, but what makes it harder in the local scene is when shops are closing around you, and business owners are telling everyone how bad it is.
Now I don’t think this is brain surgery, but I can never understand why a business owner of any type would ever say openly to anyone that “times are tough” or that “it’s real quiet” in some weak attempt to get a sympathy sale.
You are literally doing the opposite for your business, and the customer (who is literally everyone) is just left doubting your product and ability.
They are then super negative about the whole place and are sh*t-talking the whole damn street.
Think about when a friend tells you that the restaurant you plan on going to isn’t very good because ‘so-and-so’ said her pulled pork burger was dry.
You immediately take it for gospel and the rethink going there, don’t you?
Same goes for when you read an online review of a hotel - that one person who said the pool was too cold so she couldn’t swim and the whole place sucked?
Yeah, she was there in the middle of winter and just broke up with her boy-toy because he couldn’t stand listening to her real housewife dramas anymore.
Well it’s the same for retail too.
It’s same for a whole damn city.
2014 was the year I think I cracked the code.
The year that I figured out what was wrong with our economic climate and the reason why a select few were trying their absolute hardest to make things change.
But that doesn’t matter either, because the problem is (probably) you.
WHOA! Hold your horses mate!
Before you go light my shop on fire - hear me out.
I’ve travelled a fair bit - not heaps, but enough to be able to compare cities to each other and figure out what they have in common.
I hang out with locals wherever I am – I’m not really one to go on Contiki or hang out in backpackers’ hostels with other tourists.
In Tokyo there was a chick called Moé , we ran into her in a little bar down the road from where she was teaching yoga at our lodge.
We talked about everything about Japan and local customs.
She never once said that this place sucked or that you should go to the next city because “it has a better beach”.
She was all over her local, she loved it because she lived there.
There was never ever a time where she doubted where she lived and neither did any of her friends. They lived there and they absolutely loved the sh** out of it.
And because of it we don’t go a week without thinking about going back to visit.
Her passion for where she lived was infectious.
Same goes for a Losman owner I stayed with in Nias, Sumatra called Yuni.
His whole damn town got flattened by the Boxing day Tsunami in 2004 and when we visited there wasn’t much going on for it.
There wasn’t a single deli, grocery shop, pub, restaurant or even power for more than a few hours a day.
But you know who thought the place was epic?
Yep, Yuni, along with his family, his friends and literally everyone who lived there.
They lived there and they flew the Nias flag.
Their love for their piece of the planet was so contagious that myself and the mates I was all with thought it was the most magical place in the world.
Get the point?
And if you hate it for any just or unjust reasons then why don’t you just leave?
We live in this amazing time in the history where you can be anywhere in the world in 24 hours, normally for less than a few weeks of welfare payments if your dirt broke.
So if you hate somewhere, then just leave.
You’re not helping anyone, especially yourself, by staying.
I love Bunbury, it's rad.
I run into tourists from all over the place who can’t believe how good we have it, yet most locals don’t believe that we have any tourists here at all.
I mean why the heck would you come here anyway, right?
We have clean air, no traffic issues, amazing waterways, amazing restaurants, some pretty damn good retailers, amazing minimum wage and we are 1.5hrs from the airport on a good day.
There’s super passionate people that have CHOSEN to live here from all over the world and absolutely love it.
Their whole life is to expose our slice of perfection to the rest of the world that will help everyone in every way.
The stores that are here sell exactly what our big city stores sell in the likes of San-Fran and Melbourne, and if it’s not in store I bet the assistant will have a pretty damn good idea where to get it from.
But you probably didn’t even know that did you, because someone told you that there is nothing good here, right?
Meanwhile I'm here packing orders for Sydney, Canada, NYC and whereever else people want our stuff.
I’m about to open a badass tiny bar with another super passionate local homie selling the hardest to find booze for people who absolutely love it.
But hey, I’ll probably go broke, right?
Nothing good could ever come from Bunbury.
Here's a link to the last damn rant.
This post originally appeared on www.drkrmcncpt.com
