Globalization and The Shopping Mall

Just outside the city of Florence, Italy to the northwest there is a small bakery that makes wonderful schiacciata. This is a traditional flat bread typically about 3/4” thick with a dusting of salt on the top surface and is used for making panini (sandwiches) or eating alone ... as-is. This particular bakery is very popular and many items (like the schiacciata) sell out early in the day. It isn't easy to find the bakery and they don’t have a large sign ... people just know about. In fact, "forno" simply means "oven" to indicate this is a bakery rather than being the actual name of the business.

Along a road that has been enlarged and generally upgraded, and sitting almost exactly back to back with the schiacciata bakery is a brand new mall developed by a supermarket chain called Coop. By building their mall in this area, Coop is primarily challenging its’ competitor, Esselunga, who built a smaller “mini-mall” nearby a number of years ago that is also based around an Esselunga supermarket. The Coop mall is of course bigger and "better" (resembling an airport or maybe a football stadium) than the "old" Esselunga mall. It even startled me, an American accustomed to massive temples of merchandising, by finding that I could throw a computer, a few liters of motor oil, a child’s bicycle, a chain saw and a big salami into a cart and check out at the same cashier! While breaking ground for the mall construction, Roman ruins were discovered. The resulting archeological excavations have been preserved underground within a display in the mall's parking garage. It is perhaps even greater irony that an old abandoned farmhouse stands opposite the new mall, slowly crumbling but not old enough to warrant archeological concern or rehabilitation interest. The deserted farm house, the small "schiacciata" bakery and the huge Coop mall form a triad that displays cultural evolution and one of the dominant themes of a globalized economy, bigger is better.

What is happening outside of Florence is being played out all over the world wherever free markets exist ... investment and competition. The standard supply-side thinking about this is that "consumers will win" as the businesses vie for their patronage. Aside from the dubious characterization of us all being "consumers," something else is happening as the big guys slug it out to be top dog in the shopping kennel. Cultural traditions and the small local operations supported by those traditions are dealt a mortal blow and slowly fade from existence. Will the sons or daughters of the family that runs the local bakery be interested in taking over the family business (which was once a comfortable and honorable lifestyle) to spend their adult life attempting to compete with a huge shopping mall around the block? The David and Goliath theme is popular in the movies but does not make for a sound business decision. A former self-employed baker might even be considered "fortunate" in the global corporate economy to get a job managing the bakery department in the mega-store.

Also nearby in the town of Sesto is a well know open air market. Every Saturday, small vendors selling clothing, household products, and jewelry assemble their stalls on one side of a public square while vegetable, fruit, meat and cheese dealers set up on the other side of the square. Winter or summer the market is busy with local people doing their shopping, comparing the prices and quality of the produce and chatting with the vendors. While taking pictures of the market for this article, one vendor made sure to tell me to get a picture of the really big bread at his stand. He was rightfully proud of that bread ... it was as big as a truck tire! I was too busy watching a lady cut it up for a patron and I missed the shot trying to jockey into position. But what will be the future of this market if Italy too goes the way of the big malls and the "one stop" convenience shopping? Will they one day be sad that they turned their back on the small vendors and lost a big piece of their culture?

When I was a young boy there was a large fruit and vegetable dealer whose stand was along one of the major roads, just outside of downtown Syracuse. I remember it well because my mother and father must have enjoyed shopping there and took me with them quite often. In summer there were huge piles of large watermelons, giant sacks of fresh nuts and everything was displayed on beds of ice cubes from an ice machine that churned away in the back of the stand. Perhaps to young children today, going to the huge supermarket holds the same interest though it is likely they are more interested in the candy and cookies isle than in the produce. Fortunately we do still have a thriving farmer's market despite all of the supermarket wars that vie for our attention. But our farmer's market is only open two days a week in the summer months.

Below my wife's family home outside of Florence is the small town of Sodo. It no longer feels like a small town because growth has occurred in all directions and the end of Sodo is marked only by a sign along the road as you pass into the next small town of Sesto. But in the Sodo center itself are a series of small shops that include a hardware store, a tabacchi and general merchandise store, a branch bank and an electronics store. Collectively the center of Sodo is competing with the new Coop mega-mall not far down the road in Sesto. The customers of these small stores go to them because their sense of convenience is based upon proximity and because they have long standing personal relationships with the merchants. Most of the customers I see in the stores are older. Few young people will be shopping for their new cell phone in the small electronics store when they can be lured into the larger and flashier store at the mall. If the small stores go out of business, what will happen to the old town centers? We know of this disorder well in the United States. Here, it is called Urban Blight and has been somewhat unique to American cities because of the existence of more space in the suburbs.

You make a serious decision whenever you choose not to patronize a small independant merchant in favor of a large chain. Soon there may be no options.