The Mom & Pop Store: How the Unsung Heroes of the American Economy Are Surviving and Thriving

by Robert Spector

Book Overview

The buying and selling of wares goes back as far as 7500 B.C, and the first retail shops (stalls operated by artisans) were created around 650 B.C. in Turkey. Business journalist Robert Spector, who... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802716059
• ISBN13: 9780802716057
• Release Date: September 2009
• Publisher: Walker & Company
• Length: 293 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Okay, I'm Sold!

"The Mom and Pop Store" has something for everyone. It is: a passionate defense of small family businesses; a history of the retail merchant from ancient times to the present; a trip down memory lane; a celebration of the contributions of new immigrants to the melting pot that is the USA; and - most interesting of all - an exploration of how a variety of small businesses have contrived to adapt to a changing environment that includes big box stores, the Internet, gentrified neighborhoods, and more. Any reader looking for a calm and rational analysis of the place of small family businesses in our economy will be disappointed. This book is highly anecdotal. Robert Spector begins with his youth in the family butcher shop in Perth Amboy, New Jersey and ends with a walk through his current Seattle neighborhood. In between, he profiles a myriad of small stores around the country - and the world - pausing occasionally to dredge up a bit of retail history or to reminisce about some aspect of his grandfather's shop. It's true, the author does ramble a bit. But that's part of the charm. Concise? Well, no. Analytical? Uh, no, not that either. But fascinating, charming, and totally convincing? Absolutely yes!

A Studs Terkel of Mom & Pop Stores

"Small businesses account for about 50% of the private GDP of the US and create, on average, about two thirds of new jobs annually." Robert Spector interviews perhaps 50 owners of mom & pop stores and draws heavily from his own experiences as a third generation family store owner. Story after story paint a picture of the small business owner as self-reliant, hard-working, independent, passionate and inventive. The aim of this book is not to 'take on' big box retailers but simply to show how mom & pop stores get in your blood. Will mom & pop stores maintain their place in the community? Peter Drucker suggests we predict the future by creating it. Darwin suggests that survival depends on our ability to adapt to change. Small business forces it's owners to be creative and thereby gives them the foresight to adapt to changes in the economic road ahead of them. Sounds like a winning plan.

Love Your Mom and Pop

This book is about love, make no mistake about that. Retail guru Robert Spector reveals his lifelong affection for the Mom `n' Pop store, a seemingly endangered institution. Raised in such a store--a butcher shop in Perth Amboy, N.J,--Spector has spent his life researching and advising the retail universe, and it is his thesis here that retailing is all a version of the Mom `n' Pop store, and that success is achieved in the same way for such venerated giants a Nordstrom as it is for the little grocery on the corner. The book is a great read. Spector takes us through the history of retailing--which all began with little family stores--in all places of the world, from medieval fairs to eastern bazaars. He threads through his narrative abiding memories from his own life, including many of his contacts in cozy neighborhood establishments across America. He cites the reality that most U.S. stores were imbedded in the immigrant experience--the store was a way to relate to and provide for the community, and ultimately provided people like Spector with a way out into the larger world. Reading it causes one to reflect on what it was we loved about the little hardware store where all the guys used to hang out, the corner drugstore where the soda jerk knew what you were going to order, the man slicing the meat at the butcher shop with one of those fascinating slicing machines. It taps into a well of nostalgia, while at the same time reviewing dozens of up-to-date stores based on the principles of the original mom-'n'-pops. Spector is unabashedly sentimental about his subject while at the same time imparting a wealth of information and inspiration to enterprising entrepreneurs. He may be the one voice in retailing today who preaches love above techniques taught at business schools. It's a refreshing approach, totally authentic, and it's time we took a look at the obvious through such a book.