Category Archives: buying local

I have written plenty about buying local before but something happened today that made me want to revisit it… This is a single-topic rant.

Buy Local

A silly story

We source most of our products and services from local businesses, and we always look local first, but once in a while there is a product we need that we get from a bigger company out of state. I’m not going to name names but this particular vendor based 4 states away just sent us a paper statement with a zero balance. With a return envelope. In an envelope. Is this silly or what? Keep in mind that every statement we get from this company will always be a zero balance because we pay at the time we order. Okay fine, so I called them to see if they can just email them to us in the future to avoid the waste and the cost and I was told they do not have the capability to not send those statements.

They literally just told me that they are not able to stop themselves from wasting money and resources.

They have a “system update coming at some point” that may allow them that capability but for now they will continue to spit out empty mountains of paper and mail them across the country for no good reason. So the lesson here is wherever it’s practical – BUY LOCAL!!! Generally speaking it seems the bigger the company the more red tape there is, the more politics, waste, and fat – sometimes big corporations just can’t seem to get out of their own way. Granted this isn’t true of all big corporations, but small independents usually don’t have big automated systems – they typically have real people pouring their personal passion, blood, sweat and tears into their livelihood, and they will give you fewer counterintuitive answers like the one I got today.

Reality check – Local doesn’t get you everything…

Now listen, I understand you can’t buy everything local. You can’t get a Joe Phone from JoeComm on the corner and get a signal from Joe’s towers… you have to get service from a national or regional carrier. I’m not going to say I never shop at Target or Costco – I do. I don’t know any neighbors with their own oil company and refinery who can sell me gas. But if there is a choice and you have the practical option of buying local (or eating at a locally owned restaurant) you should consider it where possible.

Keep the money here

Sure I have a stake in this subject since Frameable Faces is a local independent studio, so I am biased. But keep in mind that as a rule, by buying local you are keeping more money in your local community which helps your local economy, and we Detroiters / Metro Detroiters know a thing or two about the importance of that – especially now with our city in bankruptcy.

You don’t have to agree with me, but at least you know where I stand! 🙂

Dear Detroit, You Are Awesome. Love, Frameable Faces

December 9, 2012

by Doug Cohen

4 Comments

Image courtesy of www.DetroitApparelFactory.com

We have traveled all around the country and there are a lot of cities we love. My family is originally from New York and I love it there. I love the big city and it really is an incredible place – endless things to do, see and eat. We love Chicago – we have close friends there and it’s a short drive – a ton to do there too. We love D.C. with its monuments and history. Atlanta and Philly are great cities. San Fran and L.A. are amazing. Dallas is very cool and so is Cleveland. Cincinnati is great – awesome chili, ice cream and ribs. We love Virginia Beach and we have family there. We also love South Florida and we have family and friends there all over – all the way down to the Keys – stone crab and key lime pie! We like Nashville, Houston, Tampa, Oklahoma City, Santa Fe, Jacksonville, Columbus, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Vegas, San Antonio and Atlantic City. We appreciate the smaller cities and college campuses we’ve visited like Madison, Dayton, State College, Hattiesburg, Cedar Rapids, Pensacola, Oxford, Syracuse, Vail, Taos, Morgantown, Annapolis, Richmond, the list goes on…

We love our National Parks. We love visiting battlefields, President’s homes, mountains and sand dunes. We love Skyline Drive, the Rockies, and the Natchez Trace. We want to explore the Northeast, the West and the Northwest. We have not yet been to Mount Rushmore, The Badlands, Big Sur, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon or Hawaii. We have much more we want to see.

Dear Detroit You Are Awesome…

BUT,

Here’s the thing. As wonderful and awesome as all those places are, we still love Detroit and the surrounding Metro area the most. Why is that? It’s not easy to explain to those who don’t live here. There are plenty of specific things we love of course. The food is fantastic – Lafayette Coney Island, Mexican Town and Greektown, the best Middle Eastern food, plenty of good Indian and deli, some great chop houses, amazing breakfast options all over the suburbs in West Bloomfield, Birmingham, Royal Oak, and Ferndale, Polish food in Hamtramck – and on and on. Lots of cool places to hang out as well in the aforementioned towns. Lots of diversity. There are world class museums in Detroit and there is a music history here like few other places on Earth. Of course there is also an awesome sports tradition here. Ann Arbor is pretty close as well, an incredible college town. Detroit skyline

On paper does Detroit stack up to the other cities? That really isn’t the point. The point is Detroit is where we’re from. Detroit is where we have our studio Frameable Faces Photography (West Bloomfield to be exact). Detroit is an underdog. Detroit has been kicked and punched and Detroit has punched back. Detroit rocks. Detroit is home. So Detroit, WE LOVE YOU AND WE ARE NOT LEAVING YOU.

Love,

Doug and Ally Cohen

Frameable Faces Photography

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Frameable Faces Photography
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Frameable Faces Photography is a small biz retail mom & pop shop of Doug&Ally Cohen located in the Orchard Mall in West Bloomfield, Michigan, United States Of America!
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Fashion and Style With Eleganza Boutique and The Beauty Lounge!

November 17, 2012

by Doug Cohen

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It was definitely “Haute” in the studio yesterday as we collaborated with the girls from Eleganza Boutique for images that will appear in their new catalogue! Eleganza is a neighbor of ours down the hall here in the Orchard Mall. They’ve been in business since 1986 and it is a fabulous LOCAL independent boutique. Eleganza provided the fashions and the models while hair and makeup was provided by The Beauty Lounge – a fantastic salon also here in the mall!

West Bloomfield Photographer, Frameable Faces Photography, Metro Detroit Photographer We were very excited to work with them yesterday and the results speak for themselves – so sexy and glamorous! Everyone should tap into their inner supermodel at least once, and while J and M have modeled before, J for example wowed herself with how great she looked in front of Ally’s camera! These images represent our typical “haute” session style which we have posted before. We’ve even included a little video of J working it! Enjoy! But you might need a fan to cool yourself down….. these pics are “haute Haute HAUTE!!!”

West Bloomfield Photographer, Frameable Faces Photography, Glamour Photography

It’s Time We Gave Props to Camera Mart…

April 27, 2012

by Doug Cohen

2 Comments

We follow most of our favorite vendors and partners on twitter and facebook and we are committed to buying local when we can, so when it dawned on us that we hadn’t given any online love to Camera Mart we decided to remedy that situation immediately. For starters, we decided to make a little impromptu and extremely amateurish video of our trip there yesterday to buy some grey paper for an on-location photo shoot for a dance studio (plus we think the grey will be great in the studio too). Caution: This was NOT done under professional video supervision and you should absolutely try this at home.

A Visit To Camera Mart!

Huge Selection at Camera Mart

Camera Mart carries all the major brands of just about every type of equipment you need in the field of photography. They have a great selection of lenses, accessories, printing equipment, backdrop paper, camera bags, you name it…

Knowledgeable Staff

It seems like everyone there has vast expertise not just on the products but the applications for the products beyond what you find in a product manual. They can advise on practical uses for your photography and your studio which makes a big difference when considering your purchase. Camera Mart also holds “demo days” at the store where you can come talk to representatives of most of the major brands they carry and attend various seminars to improve your knowledge.

Local Independent Store

Maybe most importantly they are a good old fashioned local merchant – we identify with that! Remember according to the 3/50 Project for every $100 spent in locally owned independent stores, $68 returns to the community through taxes, payroll, and other expenditures. If you spend that in a national chain, only $43 stays here, and if you spend it online nothing comes home.

So take our word for it – if you are looking for the best camera store in Metro Detroit, Camera Mart is the place to be!

Hail to….. wait – which?

December 2, 2011

by Doug Cohen

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I couldn’t resist this one…. One more little “buy local” rant and then I’ll (try to) leave it alone for a while.

Hail to the Victors Spartan Tee...

As a follow up to my “Meditations on Buying Local” post, this shirt appeared on this link at Rivals.com….

I’m sure many of you saw this already since a lot of people got a kick out of it and posted it on facebook especially here in Michigan where we are based. For those of you who aren’t in Michigan and may not know, Michigan State University’s team name is the Spartans and their colors are green and white, but the University Of Michigan Wolverines’ fight song contains the opening line “Hail to the Victors” and their colors are maize and blue. Needless to say this was a pretty bad mistake to mix them up and put them on the same t-shirt. I hate to sound like a broken record but putting your loyalties aside for a second and your urge to talk some smack if you’re a Wolverine or a Spartan, what this really is is a commercial for buying LOCAL. Do you think a local Michigan based t-shirt company would make a mistake as ridiculous as this? No way. Why would you want your school’s logo hijacked by some national corporate brand like this that doesn’t have a clue about it?

Now granted college athletics is huge business and national brands Adidas and Nike are the official outfitters of the sports teams at the two schools so you can’t really avoid buying the apparel from a national company. That’s the way it is. But I think the point here is there are local independent retailers you can support that sell licensed t-shirts with your alma mater on them who would never make a mistake like this. Local merchants have a feel for the local community and have a vested interest in it. National chains….not as much as evidenced by this shirt. Maybe that is a generalization that isn’t 100% fair, but c’mon. This actually made it to their website. Not one person at Pink cared enough or bothered to check on this? A business sports reporter actually pointed it out to Victoria’s Secret which is what prompted them to pull it off the site. Once again our message is not to boycott national chain stores, but rather in a case like this let Pink stick to what they do best and when you are considering buying some gear for your local team consider a local option first. If Pink bothered to get the shirt right and you could buy Pink products from local merchants then I guess it would be different, but they didn’t and you can’t.

Meditations on Buying Local…

November 18, 2011

by Doug Cohen

3 Comments

BUY LOCAL – you hear this everywhere right? Save our local economy! It’s pervasive. There are facebook and LinkedIn groups devoted to the idea, politicians throw the issue around to try to make each other look better than the opponent knowing that it’s an emotional hot button for their constituents, businesses remind you at every turn almost as a sales pitch to get you to come in and buy something in their store. You start to become numb to it.

Listen – it’s certainly an important issue to us being a local business ourselves but I like to buying local keep these posts a bit lighter and more fun. I don’t want to be a downer and I certainly don’t want to get on a soap box to beat you over the head again to shop local….. (hmmmm wait Doug – this isn’t a typical light fun Frameable Faces blog post – seems you already went there). Sorry. Big exhale….. Okay – I’m just gonna go with it then. But I’m going to try to make it as painless as possible.

The 3/50 Project – Pick 3 and Shop Local

The fact is there were three different things that put this in my head this week in particular which is why I’m thinking about it and felt the need to blog about it. The first thing happened at our last Orchard Mall tenants meeting. One of our fellow tenants alerted all of us to a project and website called The 3/50 Project whose mission is to strengthen independent brick and mortar businesses. What I like about this is that it appears to be a very sensible and practical call to action. The “3/50” part refers to the suggestion that everyone pick out 3 local businesses they would miss if they closed and commit to spending $50 per month collectively at those businesses. The studies suggest that for every 100 dollars spent at a local business 68 of them return to the community. For every 100 spent at a national chain only 43 stays here, and for every 100 spent online none of it stays here. Makes you think.

Don’t Forget Your Favorites

The second thing happened in Birmingham the other day while we were there photographing a senior. We drove past the Varsity Shop which is a sporting goods store that has been there since I was a kid. It is a small corner store that certainly would seem to be a relic from a bygone era when you compare it to stores like Dick’s and The Sports Authority not to mention Target, Meijer, Wal-Mart and all the other big box stores who sell sporting goods. I don’t know the people at the Varsity Shop and I haven’t been in there forever. I don’t know what they specialize in and I have no stake in spotlighting them, but my point is when I pondered how they’ve managed to stay in business when so many others couldn’t it dawned on me – they certainly didn’t do it because I shop there. I felt a pang of guilt – I have good memories of that place and they deserve better from me. Now to totally beat myself up over this isn’t fair because I do buy local – a lot. And with online commerce and the economies of scale that a Target or a Costco brings to the table I’d be nuts to not make sure I looked for the best deals from time to time as we try to support our family with a still-young business in this wonderful economy of ours. Indeed, the 3/50 Project doesn’t suggest you stop buying from chains, they just suggest that you make sure your healthy balance includes a helping of local merchants. I personally think I can do better and I’m going to buy something from the Varsity Shop when I get a chance. Meanwhile the Orchard Mall is filled with many local merchants. We’ve got a Panera here sure (love their breakfast power sandwich – hold the ham, extra egg), but we’ve also got a couple local eateries, a very cool local toy store, a couple boutiques, a linen store, clothing stores, a bridal couture, a dance studio, a locally based supermarket chain, a jeweler, a gift shop, a few spa/salons – all local. Most of the businesses here are local and not many malls can say that.

Seek Out Local Vendors and Partners

The third thing that happened was we received a nice thank you gift from a Michigan based company we order our albums from called Finao (the link is to their blog and much of it is targeted at their clients who are professional photography studios like us – lots of shop talk). This made us feel great and appreciated – this company really gets it. A very inspiring move on their part. It makes us happy to do business with such a great company and it gives us even greater comfort that they are based in Michigan and everything they produce is made from stuff made in the USA. This is not by accident – we have always made a point of using local vendors for the business wherever possible and most of our vendors – our framer, our printer, our canvas folks and many others are based in Michigan.

So, I suppose if I had to give myself a grade with an “A” representing a full commitment to spending as many of my dollars as possible with local businesses (within reason), and being conscious of it whenever I make my choices of what to purchase, I would probably give myself a “B”. I can do better. What about you?