I read a fantastic article in the Wall Street Journal by writer Joseph Epstein entitled “In Praise of Shopkeepers.” You must read it: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124770241303048557.html.

In this piece, the writer – a fellow Evanstonian (IL) comments on the changing retail in what was once the “Shopping Mecca” of Chicago’s northshore. Epstein takes consolation in the fact that the shopping adventure he once knew as a child can be experienced just a few miles south in Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood. A few remarks about an “unpretentious and excellent shoe store,” and a “thrift store loaded with surprising items,” and Epstein speaks the language of the shopper who longs for the “wow factor” that has been missing in today’s corporate big box retail. “The element of unpredictability,” Epstein writes, “of delightful surprise, should be part of the adventure of shopping — an element precluded by the standard stores.”

This is vindication for local businessmen and women like myself (I was then GM for an eclectic group of 4 restaurants that were big players in downtown Evanston) who fought to protect independent retail against an initiative to bring in TIFD-funded big box powers with no real stake in the community back in 1998. Ten years later, not only has speculative risk not worked, but the city fathers scared away entrepreneurs and renaissance retailers in favor of becoming a second rate Lincoln Park (a trendy but over-priced and over-crowded Chicago northside neighborhood).

Going back to the bigger picture, Epstein makes two excellent points as to why independent shopkeepers are critical to our economy and to our society.

“‘England is a nation of shopkeepers,’ remarked Napoleon,…suggesting that…the English, as mere shopkeepers, were unfit to fight the French. Well, we know how the shopkeepers fared at a place called Waterloo. No great surprise, really. Considerable courage and perserverence are required to start and keep a good shop running. Especially is this so today, when real estate rental is expensive, taxes on profits high, and the prospect of being clobbered by a national chain store moving in discourage the initiative needed to open a useful shop.”

For this country to lift itself from the ruins of recession, we need to become a nation of shopkeepers. Self-sufficient people willing to take the risk of opening or acquiring a business can compete with the big boys through better service and sourcing the pleasantly surprising items at even more surprising prices.

The Off Price Show can furnish them with the best deals on a wide selection of quality apparel, accessories, footwear and home & gift. Online vehicles such as OffPriceShow.com, OffPriceshowrooms.com, TopTenWholesale.com, the newly re-designed OffPriceNetwork.com and other JP products can connect indy retailers with suppliers willing to deal in smaller quantities who can also drop-ship anywhere in the world.

Epstein ends his article with a second excellent point, that “Running a good shop is a service to one’s community, of much greater value, in my view, than the work of two hundred social workers, five hundred psychotherapists, and a thousand second-rate poets… A nation of shopkeepers, far from being the put-down Napoleon thought, sounds more and more like an ideal to which a healthy country ought to aspire.”

To this end, I invite all independent and smaller chain retailers to check us out at the show, online and of course, at JP’s sites. Jason, I hope you see this and list your products proudly with some sagely comment. And Jason, I also challenge you and your colleagues, especially at your new property Manufacturer.com, to extend yourselves to the smaller apparel retailers, home & gift shops, general merchandisers, and wholesalers, to take advantage of the online directories and links to vendors so that they can get a “marginal” edge on the competition. Oh wait, you do that already! You know have the Englishman (Daniel Brindley), now help us rebuild this nation of shopkeepers by bridging the gap between excellent values worldwide and THE RIGHT PEOPLE who know how to merchandise them.