January 24, 2007

Online shoppers are urged to keep dollars from straying

PAUL SWIDER

The Web may be worldwide, but Mike Alstott is trying to bring it closer to home.

"We want to focus on the local community and make it strong," said Alstott, the Tampa Bay Buccaneer fullback who partnered last year with business consultant Mike Harter to produce justlookitup.com, a Web site that promotes area businesses.

The site is one of many attempts by communities to get shoppers to spend their money nearby, not with out-of-town operations.

By working with companies in Pinellas, Pasco and Hillsborough counties that have their own Web sites, justlookitup.com attempts to channel Web shopping so it can have the greatest effect on the bay area's economy.

"People shopping on the Web spend millions of dollars out of our area," said Harter, who runs Bottom Line Publications. "We're not paying attention to it, but we're sending our money to other cities and it's hurting our economy."

Harter said the site already has about 14,000 listings out of 20,000 business Web sites in the area and 100,000 businesses. He said those who have a site are listed free, but Bottom Line will produce Web sites for companies so they can be listed online. There will also be a print directory this spring.

Harter approached Alstott in the summer about listing the athlete's mortgage company, A-Train Mortgage. Alstott said he saw the value of the idea and instead offered to invest. The site has been up since September and is getting 13,000 hits a day.

"We've been getting a phenomenal response from business," Alstott said. "They understand that the Internet is the way of life."

Listed businesses have to be based in the area and employ people here, but they can be owned by others. Others involved in the independent-business movement say that's selling the concept short.

If justlookitup.com defines membership by geography, not ownership, profits still leave the community, said Carla Jimenez, owner of Tampa's Inkwood Books and head of the Tampa Independent Business Alliance.

The alliance pushes businesses that are owned and operated by people in the Tampa Bay area.

"It's a very different focus than we have," she said. "Local ownership is important to the culture as well as the economy."

Jimenez said a chain store sends 80 percent of its money out of town, while a dollar spent with a local business will be spent three more times in the community. Harter and Alstott agree but say spending at a store down the street still has greater local impact than buying online from a national retailer.

There is no equivalent of the Tampa Independent Business Alliance in Pinellas County, but the St. Petersburg Area Chamber of Commerce takes yet a third approach to supporting local business.

"There's a lot of true logic that you want people to buy local, but how do you define local?" asked John Long, chief executive officer of the chamber, which has members based in and out of the region.

"We want people to buy from our members because they're the best businesses, not just because you can hit them with a stone across the street."

Alstott and Harter aim to expand their flavor of local-business support and meet the demands they've seen already.

They have had interest from area corporations to sponsor the site and are being pestered by other counties to expand. They say they may expand the concept, but they'll settle for making it work here.

"We want to be involved in the community," Alstott said. "It's like home cooking."

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