TWO stories in today’s Daily Advertiser speak to an undeniable truth about the rapidly changing face of business in our city.
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They reinforce a fact most of us already know: the old business model that has operated in Wagga for generations has been unshackled and redefined.
No longer do you need a bricks and mortar business to succeed.
In fact, a shopfront – with its overheads like rent and electricity – can be a liability.
Just ask Amanda Bahr.
In May, her dream of owning a florist took her to an unlikely place – a used car yard.
There, she snapped up a 10-foot long 1974 York van, and My Floral Styling was born.
The “pop-up florist” is a mobile shopfront, spruiking its wares from roadsides in Henty, Culcairn and Holbrook.
And it’s working for a simple reason: shoppers want convenience.
Meanwhile, today’s story on the booming second-hand economy in Wagga highlights just how nimble and savvy those shoppers are becoming.
Wagga’s two “buy, swap, sell” pages boast a collective 50,000 members, who do precisely what the name of the page suggests.
It marks yet another disruption of the traditional business model (in this case, second-hand shops).
And few industries are immune from being blown away by the winds of change.
Peer-to-peer technology is proving to be much more than an opportunity to download the latest Game of Thrones episode, but a seismic social and economic shift enabled by technology.
Digital technology has turned the town square into a global square and this has spawned an enormous global movement that is transforming people into businesses.
Just as we once used the town square to barter and trade, we can now use the web for the same activities on an unprecedented scale.
For those stuck in the old way of thinking, it can be a daunting prospect.
But it need not be.
As start-up entrepreneurs like Simone Eyles have already shown, a highly successful online business can be launched from a regional area like Wagga just as easily as it can from a capital city.
You can’t put the genie back in the bottle.
The online shopping revolution is here to stay.
Businesses have no other option but to join the conga line or be left behind.