Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 20:54:30 EDT
From: Bprentice2
Subject: Response to Matt Rudolf’s PLENTY opinion
Wow.. I just read Matt Rudolf’s posting saying that Antonella’s Salon has decided, for business reasons, to not accept the PLENTY, and that he would no longer be their customer because of that. I think this TOTALLY misses the point of the PLENTY.
Now, let me preface this by saying I am not involved in, nor have I even really formed an opinion about either “item” in this post (Antonella’s, or the PLENTY) . But my understanding is that the PLENTY is there to show support for local stores and services, and to give customers of those local stores and services a 10% discount, with that cost being borne by the vendor that accepts them. If that vendor can then find a supplier (another vendor) to take their PLENTY as cash, they then pass off the 10% discount burden to the supplier. If not, they eat that 10% discount by converting PLENTY back to cash.
So it really depends on the financial state of the vendor as to whether they can afford an additional 10% discount, particularly if they cannot find a supplier to accept those bills. So if this portrayal of the program is correct, then I question why Mr. Rudolf might boycott a store or service if they won’t accept the PLENTY. If others took this same opinion, it would do
nothing but harm the local economy by financially threatening local businesses. Is Pittsboro supposed to be a “PLENTYs only” financial market? I don’t think so. So to threaten to take away your business from a local merchant because they don’t participate says to me that you have the priority backwards… its not “Local businesses for the good of the PLENTY program” its “the PLENTY program for the good of the local businesses.”
As I said, I don’t really have a dog in this fight but would hate to see the PLENTY program hurting local business, or someone hurting the PLENTY program by intimidating local vendors into accepting them.
Just my opinion, nothing more, nothing less.