Last week, I set out to buy a Christmas gift for a family member. Like many Canadians, I made a conscious decision to buy local. This presented the first opportunity I had to support a relatively new, super cute little bookstore nearby.
Again, like many, I Googled the book title with “local bookstore” attached and got a bunch of sponsored Amazon results. We help small businesses appear in those shopping results, and clearly no one is helping a single local bookstore with that.
The store I was looking for, the closest local bookstore to me, was nowhere in the results. I dug into the map results, found them, and clicked over to their website. Once there, it took far too long to uncover the search function just to see if the not at all obscure book was in their collection, only to discover that they did not have it.
I want to be super clear. If I were an Amazon shopper, I would never have made it this far. I would have completed my order and been two days away from receiving it.
I am not an Amazon customer, so my journey continued. I decided to go old school and give them a call to ask if they could get it in for me in time for Christmas. That was giving them just shy of two weeks. Again, Amazon would have had it in my hands in two days.
This is when I was told, “We don’t order books. You can try the King’s Bookstore or Bookmarks.”
I said thanks and hung up.
Another point of clarity. They were polite and friendly. There was nothing wrong with this interaction. I appreciate that they offered up two local options without suggesting Amazon or even Coles, Chapters, or Indigo.
But they did have to send me away.
Now, I admittedly do not know much about how bookstores operate, and if there are actually only two local shops that will order a book, I am assuming there is some industry-specific thing that I am missing.
So, with a pair of local options in hand, I visited both websites.
On the first site, I completed a search and discovered it would take 13 days for in store pickup. I checked the other in hopes of finding a shorter turnaround and discovered the exact same thing on what I believe is the same book-selling platform.
I may not know a lot about the business of selling books, but one thing I do know is marketing, and I also understand the moment we are living in.
There is a reason even the oldest marketing frameworks insist that promotion without product is meaningless. This is not a one off service failure so much as the predictable outcome of a business model that prioritises presence over purchase.
Here is the problem for me and the local store I want to support.
First, they have a customer who has never shopped with them before, one who genuinely wants to support local, and who chose them based on their small amount of local brand awareness. They could not do what seems like the most basic thing: order a book for that customer.
The irony for me is that this is partly because they seem, at least on the surface and I am not claiming to know, to be doing exactly what I would normally recommend. They are not giving in to a dominant, dependence creating app and are refusing to base their survival on a book ordering platform.
I am that customer. I chose that business. They were likely powerless to do anything that was in their interest and mine to win me over.
I hope it is clear that I am not blaming them. This post is less about solutions and more about understanding.
Why This Still Leaves Me Feeling Optimistic
Next year is going to be one of the biggest years for Canada and Canadians in a generation or more.
Its success will depend on our ability to support local and support Canadian. That responsibility is shared. It sits with customers who want to make better choices and just as much with businesses who want to be chosen.
Small businesses cannot assume people should know about them. The reality is that most people do not, even when they genuinely want to. The opportunity right now is massive. Customers are actively looking for ways to discover local businesses and support them.
Our message to small businesses is simple: step up.
This moment will not last forever, but right now it is easier than it has ever been to reach people who want to buy from you. The businesses that win will be the ones that pair strong brands with clear strategies and websites that actually work. What I mean by this is simple: the survivors will be businesses that do not depend on big tech companies, social media platforms, or a sense of small business entitlement to carry on.
Do not give Mark Zuckerberg more power. Build your own website. A website that helps people find you, trust you, and choose you.
In this small-but-mighty business, we are walking into 2026 knowing who we are and what we do. That is exactly where we are focused.
Our job, our mission, is to help local businesses build the foundations that make supporting local, supporting Canadian not just the right choice, but the easy one.
Because if we can meet in the middle, where intention and convenience finally align, supporting Canadian will not feel hard at all.