Shift where you eat ... and shop, locals ask

The goal is to get Tacomans to spend more of their money closer to home, but it’s the name that’s getting some attention.

Tacoma Shift Happens, an initiative by business alliance GoLocal, is an attempt to get people to shift 10 percent of their spending from national chains to locally owned businesses. The campaign starts Monday with a showcase featuring 48 Tacoma businesses and a State of the City address from the mayor.

Does the name get in the way of that goal?

“We actually had an established business person here in Cambridge have this event one night last year called the Shift, or Shift Happens. I got more calls from people saying, ‘What the h-e-double toothpicks is this?’” Kelly Thompson Clark, chief executive of the Cambridge, Mass., Chamber of Commerce, said Wednesday. “I don’t know if it’s the best way unless there’s a larger marketing education campaign behind it.”

GoLocal founder and president Patricia Lecy-Davis said Wednesday that it’s “a pitch to create a philosophy shift.”

She came up with the slogan after seeing how other campaigns, including the one in Cambridge, developed. “I really push the envelope,” Lecy-Davis said. “I really wanted to bring something that was about Tacoma, instead of copying someone else’s plan.

“There’s not much you can do these days that catches people’s attention,” she said. “We’re so numb to marketing. branding, propaganda, there’s not much that shocks us anymore. It really has to be sticky.”

Similar campaigns are happening across the country, albeit with less provocative names. (Shift Arizona. 10% Shift. Shift The Way You Shop.)

In Tacoma, the logo features gears you might see in a machine, but the button for the Facebook page says “Does a bear shift in the woods?”

A blog called “Shooting the Shift” is in the works. So are stickers that say “I am the shift.”

“The overwhelming response has been that it’s great,” she said. “Some people automatically go to what the negative is, but the philosophy behind the statement … is that it happens, get over it, move on. It’s going to happen. Right now a shift in our mindset is happening and needs to happen.”

Shopping locally is “how we vote with our dollars,” she said.

Tacoma’s Downtown Merchants Group President Whitney Rhodes said the goal is to get people’s attention, and it worked.

“I like that it’s edgy,” she said. “I think that’s what we need. I would like to see us as small businesses push the boundary and stop playing it safe.”

The campaign’s mission statement shows it also wants to change the way people think about economic development.

“The idea that large employers guarantee prosperity and a healthy, vibrant community appears at odds with economic trends and realities,” reads the mission statement at www.tacomashifthappens.com.

The “10 percent shift” campaigns reference a single case study done in Austin, Texas, in 2002 that showed that of $100 spent at a national bookstore, $13 stayed in the local economy versus $46 for a locally owned bookstore. But economist Tom Rex told The Arizona Republic in September it is commonly accepted among economists that spent dollars are multiplied and that the more dollars are spent on locally based companies, the more the local economy is helped.

He acknowledged that shopping locally sometimes can cost more. “You are benefiting the economy, but you are sacrificing somewhat individually in terms of the amount you are spending,” Rex said.

Lecy-Davis, who owns Embellish salon, said people think their shopping choices are “a little mom-and-pop store” or a national chain. But Tacoma has several primary employers who also are independent local businesses, such as candymaker Brown and Haley and office supplier Chuckals. Plus, shopping small doesn’t necessarily mean local. A business might have 50 employees but be owned by a corporation in another state, she said.

GoLocal, a nonprofit whose annual budget of about $100,000 includes about $25,000 a year since 2009 from the City of Tacoma, plans to grow through membership and other grants. A top goal for the next two years, Lecy-Davis said, is to compile a business sourcing directory, where local governments and businesses can find out quickly who in the area sells what.

It’s a philosophy many businesses already practice.

Chris Miller, an owner of The Red Hot on Sixth Avenue, said the business’s biggest product is beer, and the business buys 75 percent of it from Washington brewers.

“Keep your money in your neighborhood,” he said.

His brother, Stu, also part owner of the business, said that extends to their personal lives.

“I just paid late fees at Stadium Video, but I refuse to go on Netflix,” he said. “I see those guys in here, spending their money, so I’ll spend my money there.”

Neither was bothered by the name of the campaign, though they wish they had known sooner about the expo so they could participate.

Furniture and design store Posh Home owner Jennifer Colley said the idea of shopping locally is good, but the name needs work.

“You automatically have a negative thought,” she said. “You purposely have to think about it to say ‘shift.’”

Colley’s said she’s an example of how personal service sets local businesses apart. She started in Tacoma in 2004 and now has a second location in Bellevue, called The Standard.

“If (a client asks) me, ‘Jen, I need a dining table that’s this style, this price, can you go out and find it for me?’ I go out and find it,” she said. “You can’t call Crate & Barrel to do that.”

Kathleen Cooper: 253-597-8546 kathleen.cooper@thenewstribune.com

Editor's Note: This story was updated 1/28/2011 to correct that the City of Tacoma contributes $25,000 per year.