It’s Time to Break Up with Amazon. Here’s How.

Crutchfield, launched in 1974 and still owned by its founder, went online in 1988. It not only sells A/V equipment for homes, businesses, and automobiles, but it also provides customized installation instructions and a dedicated hotline to help customers install their products. That’s the kind of service and attention to detail that characterizes independent businesses, whose owners and staff are experts in the products and services they sell. By contrast, Amazon actively restricts contact between shoppers and third-party sellers on its platform, making it almost impossible for buyers to tap into that valuable knowledge and experience.

The retail bicycle industry experienced some economic whiplash during the COVID-19 pandemic. Demand spiked dramatically for bicycles early in the pandemic — but then supply chain challenges choked off new inventory, triggering some consolidation in the industry as companies like Trek and Performance Bike snapped up smaller dealerships. But there are still several thousand independent bicycle shops in the US. The National Bicycle Dealers Association can provide links to shops near you.

After being clobbered by Amazon in its early days, independent bookstores are making a comeback. There are now more than 2,100 indie bookstores throughout the nation, and the number is slowly growing. You can find a directory of American Booksellers Association member stores on the ABA’s website. It’s even easy to buy books online and support independent bookstores at the same time. Bookshop.org, a Certified B Corporation, offers almost every book available from Ingram Content Group, the world’s largest wholesale book distributor. Shoppers can designate a specific indie bookstore from which to buy the book. If they don’t, profits from the book’s sale will be divvied up among the bookstores on the platform. There are also plenty of independent bookstores with robust online storefronts and global shipping, like Books & Books (Coral Gables), Changing Hands Bookstore (Phoenix and Tempe), Politics and Prose (Washington, DC), Powell’s (Portland, Oregon), and Raven Book Store (Lawrence, Kansas). For audiobooks, there’s Libro.fm. It works a lot like Amazon’s Audible.com, but it supports independent bookstores.

Although digital photography has largely replaced film and smartphones have taken the place of cameras for many people, contributing to the demise of many local camera stores, there are still some great independently owned camera shops around, and most of them have robust and informative online storefronts. For example, check out Abe’s of Maine, District Camera (Washington, DC), Jack’s Camera Shop (Indiana), and National Camera Exchange (Colorado). Many indie camera stores also rent cameras, lenses, and lighting gear, if you just need equipment for a short period of time. KEH sells high-quality used cameras and camera equipment — or you can rent from LensRentals.com

Etsy and Uncommon Goods are big platforms for indie businesses in this retail category. But there are more than 10,000 independently owned gift stores in the US, and many of them have online storefronts. Before you default to Amazon for a gift, do an online search to find stores near you.

This one’s a no-brainer: There are over 62,000 grocery stores in the US, and one-third of them are independently owned, which means they are more likely to customize their products to meet local needs and offer special services. You can find the ones closest to you on the National Grocers Association’s website. There are also a number of specialty grocery stores that ship nationally, like Thrive Market, which specializes in organic groceries, cosmetics, and cleaning products. It’s a membership-based business; for each paid membership, it gives a free membership to first responders, nurses, students, teachers, and veterans, and to families that cannot afford a membership. It’s also a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC), which means that, unlike Amazon, it operates primarily for the benefit of its customers and workers, not for its shareholders.

Jewelry can be a big investment, and shoppers understandably want to be sure they are investing wisely. Amazon’s lax standards for evaluating third-party sellers mean that shoppers don’t really know what they’re getting — and there have been numerous reports of counterfeit jewelry and jewelry with dangerous levels of lead being sold on Amazon’s platform. Independent jewelers not only offer authenticity, but they also offer services that Amazon can’t, like jewelry repairs, appraisals, and custom designs. They are part of their community fabric, with their reputations built largely on the trust they have built over the years. So, it’s no surprise that independent jewelers have remarkable staying power. Many of them have been around for a century or more, like Bixler’s (1785–Allentown, Pennsylvania), Bromberg’s (1836–Mountain Brook, Alabama), and Kuhn’s Jewelers (1853–Salisbury, Maryland). The Independent Jewelers Association’s website has a searchable directory.

Even though consolidation in the pharmacy industry has shuttered many independent pharmacies in recent years, there are still over 18,000 community pharmacies in operation — and there is simply no comparison between the personalized care that independent pharmacies offer and Amazon Pharmacy’s total lack of personalized care. You can find an interactive directory of independent pharmacies on the National Community Pharmacists Association’s website.

Most musical instruments require some adjustments before being used, like ensuring that a guitar’s truss rod’s tension is properly set or a violin’s fine tuners are installed correctly. These are services that independent musical instrument dealers routinely offer — but Amazon doesn’t. Like many other specialty trade associations, the Alliance of Independent Music Merchants offers a searchable directory of its member stores on its website. Some, like Elderly Instruments (Lansing) and Mike’s Music (Cincinnati) specialize in used instruments and equipment. Some even function like marketplace platforms for people selling their used instruments. Reverb, for example, charges a modest 3.5 sales commission and a 2.7 percent transaction fee — versus Amazon’s fees, which can reach 45 percent.

Amazon has been slammed by regulators and news media repeatedly for selling dangerous toys on its platform — dangers like choking hazards, high levels of toxic chemicals, and magnets that can puncture a child’s intestines if swallowed. Independent toy stores are a safer option. There is a searchable directory of the American Specialty Toy Retail Association’s member stores on its website.