First of all, Happy Independence Day! It's hot outside...too hot, so I'm indoors and watching the History channel's "America, the Story of Us" miniseries marathon. It's incredible, by the way.
Anyhow, the one segment is regarding modern technology and advancement. It explained how the internet revolution started. It shows how computers were once the size of a greyhound bus (I remember how they took up an entire room at my school) and how the personal computer, PC, was invented.
It began to explain how the internet has broadened our world. In fact, Soledad O'Brian from CNN explained us Americans as having an "entrepreneurial spirit" and how we used the internet to expand business and trade beyond our wildest dreams.
When I started my primitives business, I did it backwards. I started online with ebay for a very short time and quickly started my own website at the perfect time when primitives were just beginning to take off. After having my website for several years, I decided to also open a brick and mortar store next to our home.
Many local folks scoff at the fact that most of us retailers anymore have online businesses. So many customers even admit that they don't have a computer at home and never care to. I'm just fine and dandy with that and can understand that some folks just don't want one.
What I'm not fine with is being scoffed at. My online business is so much more successful than my brick and mortar store and is, in fact, more than a full time job at this point. Nearly every brick and mortar store has an online avenue for selling. What's the shame in that? Afterall, even many of the Amish have computers at their places of business and is allowed in certain church districts along with cell phones....just as long as they don't have them at home, it's fine and dandy. Heck, if the Amish see the upside of online retailing and moving forward (at least a little bit) with technology to make their businesses successful, I think more of us fancy folk should as well.
My online business was my first love and always will be. In fact, it may eventually be my only love since it's not making good business sense to keep a brick and mortar store anymore with the high overhead costs and slow foot traffic compared to my online business. With hundreds/thousands of hits per day on a website, the need for a brick and mortar store seems quite, well, old fashioned. Online sellers can reach customers all over the country, all over the world and interact with them in a very personal way through social networking sites and personal emails back and forth. That's something that many in our "modern" world don't realize and it's an untapped resource, in my opinion.
So I wish to say thank you to Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and even Al Gore for having the know how, the forsight to see into the future and have the internet revolution.....a different type of revolution for us to celebrate on this Independence Day!
Many Blessings,
Mary Jo
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