Independent businesses matter for reasons that go well beyond where we choose to buy our coffee.
They employ people, work with other local businesses, support community organisations and help create the character of the places in which we live and work. When they're doing well, some of that success spreads outwards into the local economy around them.
And yet the conversation around supporting independents can sometimes feel a little worthy. Shop local. Support small. Use independents whenever you can.
We believe in all of those things, but there's a bigger commercial argument worth making.
Independent businesses shouldn't simply be supported because they're independent. They need to be good businesses. They need customers who actively choose them, propositions that stand up against larger competitors and enough profit to invest, employ people and keep getting better.
The goal isn't to protect independents from competition.
It's to help more of them become strong enough to compete.
Money spent locally has somewhere else to go
One of the most obvious arguments for independent businesses is what happens to the money they generate.
A successful local business pays wages, buys services, works with suppliers, employs accountants, designers, photographers, cleaners, tradespeople and countless other businesses. Its owners and employees spend money locally too.
Not every pound stays within a neat geographical boundary, of course. Independent businesses use national suppliers, international technology and plenty of the same infrastructure as everyone else.
But there's a network around a healthy independent business that is easy to underestimate.
We've seen it ourselves. One business grows and needs more people. A retailer commissions a local photographer. A restaurant works with local producers. A company moves into larger premises and brings work to local trades. Businesses recommend other businesses, collaborate on events and introduce customers to one another.
Growth doesn't stop at the front door.
That's one reason we're interested in helping independent businesses become stronger rather than simply helping them do more marketing. A sustainable, profitable business has considerably more capacity to contribute to the economy around it than one constantly fighting to keep its head above water.
Independent businesses create good jobs too
There's a tendency in conversations about economic growth to focus on the businesses creating hundreds or thousands of jobs.
Understandably so.
But an independent business employing five people matters. So does one employing twenty, fifty or a hundred. Put enough of those businesses together and they form a substantial part of the economy.
More importantly, those jobs are often rooted in the places where the businesses operate.
A growing retailer needs another member of the shop team. A manufacturer needs somebody in production. A professional services business takes on its first graduate. A hospitality business develops someone from their first shift into a management role.
These aren't necessarily the jobs that generate headlines about the next great economic success story. They are, however, the jobs that allow people to build careers and lives in the places they call home.
Helping an established independent business employ another five people might not sound quite as exciting as helping a start-up chase a billion-pound valuation.
We think both are worth taking seriously.
They make places worth caring about
There's also something harder to measure.
Walk through almost any town or city and think about the businesses that give it its identity. The café everyone knows. The restaurant that's been there for twenty years. The slightly obsessive specialist shop. The family business that seems to know half the city. The newer independent that's taken over an empty unit and done something completely unexpected with it.
Remove enough of those businesses and places begin to become interchangeable.
We don't particularly want Cambridge, Bristol, Bath, Norwich or anywhere else to become slightly rearranged collections of the same national and international brands. Chains have their place, and we all use them, but they rarely provide the whole character of a place.
Independents do something different.
They're shaped by the people behind them and the customers around them. They can respond to their communities without waiting for a decision from head office. They collaborate with neighbouring businesses, support local events and often have relationships with customers that would be difficult for a much larger organisation to reproduce.
That isn't just charming.
It's a competitive advantage.
Being independent isn't enough
This is where we think some of the traditional "shop local" conversation falls short.
Customers shouldn't have to accept a worse product, frustrating website, confusing service or significantly poorer experience simply because a business happens to be independent.
Supporting local businesses can't rely indefinitely on goodwill.
Independents are competing for the same customers, attention and disposable income as businesses with vastly larger budgets and resources. Expectations have changed too. Customers accustomed to excellent digital experiences don't suddenly forget those expectations when dealing with a smaller company.
The answer isn't for every independent business to behave like a miniature version of a national brand.
Quite the opposite.
It's about combining the things independents naturally do well, expertise, personality, relationships, specialist knowledge, agility and genuine connection to their customers, with the commercial and digital capability needed to compete in the modern market.
A brilliant independent shop with a terrible online experience is leaving an advantage unused. A specialist business that knows more about its subject than almost anyone but can't explain that expertise clearly is making life unnecessarily difficult for itself.
The opportunity isn't to become more corporate.
It's to become a better independent.
The growth conversation overlooks a lot of businesses
This matters particularly in places with strong start-up and innovation economies.
A huge amount of expertise, investment and infrastructure quite reasonably exists around technology companies, university spin-outs, life sciences and businesses capable of rapid scale. These companies can create extraordinary value and deserve support.
But they're not the whole business economy.
There's another group that tends to receive rather less attention: established independent businesses that aren't necessarily looking for venture capital or explosive growth, but have genuine ambition.
Perhaps they're turning over £500,000 and want to reach £1 million. Perhaps they're a £2 million business trying to become more profitable. They might want another location, a stronger management team, better customers or simply a business that no longer relies quite so heavily on its founder.
There are thousands of businesses sitting somewhere in that territory.
They don't need a watered-down version of the expertise available to larger companies.
They need good commercial thinking applied to the realities of running an independent business.
Profit isn't a dirty word
If we want stronger independent businesses, we should probably talk more openly about profitability too.
A business that makes money can invest. It can employ people, improve salaries, develop products, take risks, survive difficult periods and support other businesses.
A business operating permanently on the edge can't do much of that.
So when we talk about supporting independents, we're not particularly interested in preserving businesses in aspic. We want them to sell more, make sensible margins, become better employers and create wealth for the people who've taken the risk of building them.
We want that for Le Claires too.
There's no contradiction between caring about local economies and wanting to build a successful business. In fact, we'd argue that successful, profitable independent businesses are exactly what healthy local economies need more of.
The important question is how that success is created and what happens around it as the business grows.
Strong independents create stronger places
Shopping locally still matters. Recommending an independent business matters. Choosing the local restaurant, retailer or professional when they're the right choice helps those businesses succeed.
But we'd like to aim a little higher than asking people to support independent businesses out of goodwill.
We want more independents to become businesses people actively want to choose.
Businesses with great products, strong propositions, excellent experiences and the confidence to compete on their own terms. Businesses capable of investing in their people, their customers and the places around them.
Because the stronger those businesses become, the less the conversation needs to be about asking people to "support local".
They'll choose local because it's better.
And that's a much more interesting ambition.