Concord Monitor, June 11, 2012
There are probably more profound reasons to get married or bring a baby into the world, but you’ve got to admit, this one is pretty darn cool. The Nearby Registry, an online e-commerce and gift registry service for local shops and services, is getting ready to go live in the next few months. Founder Allison Grappone let us in on the latest details of this unique venture.
How does the Nearby Registry work?
It’s an online service both for gift registry and e-commerce for local independent stores. And by stores we actually mean everything from traditional retail shops to services like restaurants and salons and nonprofits. So the basic throw down of it is that the stores create what we call a Nearby storefront, so we’ll get a conglomerate of store fronts signed on, and then shoppers can go on and shop just like they can on Amazon. And then if you want to create a gift registry you can really cherry pick all the different items that you want from the different stores and the different services and non-profits and put it all into one gift registry.
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Why do you think the “shop local” movement has taken hold the way it has?
Everybody talks about local now. But one of the great things about supporting local is it’s not just “yeah, I give money to my local business.” But when you do that, money re-circulates so many more times because now that local business is using local services like banking and maintenance and construction. There’s actually a statistic by the American Independent Business Alliance and the Institute for Local Self Reliance, that two to three times more local economic activity is generated when you shop at an independent business versus a chain.
Read the full story here.
