1980s ‘Buy Oregon’ effort matched buyers to vendors
The deep and painful recession of the 1980s spawned a “buy local” program in Eugene that the Oregon Legislature later made statewide and the U.S. Department of Commerce replicated nationally.
Now, three years after the start of the Great Recession locally, some business people are saying it may be time to revive the effort.
When business is going like gangbusters, in years such as 2005, the chief criteria for company buyers is finding the best price, said Rick Evans, who once ran the statewide buy local program.
“But now people are saying, ‘Where it comes from does matter, and if we can keep jobs locally, that’s meaningful. If we’re not buying stuff from China, that’s meaningful,’ ” Evans said.
The notion behind the “Buy Oregon” program started in 1983 by the Eugene- and Springfield-based Neighborhood Economic Development Corporation was: If money would recirculate locally, it could reduce the state unemployment rate, which then was 12 percent, compared with today’s 9.6 percent.
The Buy Oregon staff interviewed local business buyers to determine whether there were in-state substitutes for items they usually bought out of state. When there were, the program made a match.
“I always thought of it as the yenta of business, you’re doing a lot of matchmaking,” said Michael Shuman, research director for the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, a nonprofit alliance representing more than 22,000 independent business members in the United States and Canada.
Some examples:
Trailer maker Burley Design Cooperative started buying wheels from Eugene bike-maker Gary Hale.
Several local television stations canceled contracts with a California firm and hired Eugene-based Shelton Turnbull Printers to produce script forms.
Pasta Plus made bowtie noodles for Chef Francisco.
The Eugene City Council backed “Buy Oregon” during its first two years with $20,000 in grants.
The third year, the Legislature passed a bill to take the program statewide and renamed it Oregon Marketplace. Eventually, the Legislature used lottery money to keep the business-matching program alive.
“This was fabulously successful for about 15 years,” Shuman said, adding that the state lost interest eventually.
Evans said the program fell out of favor in the late 1990s.
“It was viewed by some legislators as provincial. It was like, ‘Borders mean nothing to buyers.’ They’re looking for the best price whether or not it’s across a border,” said Evans, who is executive director of the Organization for Economic Initiatives, which ran the program for the state.
In 1999, the Legislature stripped the program from the budget, and it was gone, Evans said.
Now, some local business people are wondering whether a new “buy local” program is in order.
In 2008, local printers IP/Koke Printing and Northwest Web went out of business, taking more than 125 jobs with them, Shelton Turnbull President Barry Miller said.
A buy local yenta would have helped, he said.
“Very often, we’re looking at producing print jobs and a company up in Portland receives it,” he said. “I always wonder why. If someone ran up there for price, we could certainly lower our price and get more competitive, if given that chance.
“A lot of it is communication.”
Another Eugene business, HYDRO-FIT, found sourcing and manufacturing locally were the only way to survive the recession.
In 2003, the company, which specializes in deep-water aerobics gear, was growing rapidly, and the factory in the Whiteaker neighborhood of Eugene was overrun with orders, President Craig Stuart said.
Stuart contracted Pro Trade, a Eugene company that helps other Eugene companies find manufacturing plants for their goods in China.
But after four years of outsourcing, the labor prices were going up, transportation prices were going up and Stuart felt he had imperfect quality control, he said. So he brought the manufacturing back home to Eugene — which, in retrospect, was a lucky move.
The next year, the economy slid into recession, and HYDRO-FIT sales dipped.
“All we had to do was cancel purchase orders,” he said. “We could respond right away to the changing demand for our products. We weren’t sitting on 5,000 of these in our warehouse — which are now not going to sell in six months.
“Had we still been outsourcing to China, we would have been obligated and sitting on huge amounts of inventory that wouldn’t move. (Returning production to Eugene) totally saved us.”
Today, Stuart employs nine people in his Eugene factory. And he can affix a “Crafted With Pride in the U.S.A.” logo on his products, which helps with sales, he said.
“This is especially important business-to-business today,” he said. “We’ll sell our products wholesale. Some of the largest companies in the industry today make that a priority — if you aren’t ‘Made in America,’ you would be on the second decision ladder.”
The more energy costs increase, the more manufacturing will return to the United States, Shuman said. The return will be timed incrementally by the products’ weight, heavy to light, he said.
“It’s going to make absolutely no sense to make bricks in China and bring them back to the United States,” he said.
In the meantime, many local businesses are buying supplies locally, even if it costs more than ordering online or at the big box office supply stories.
Smith Family Bookstore gets its office supplies at Willamette Stationers, bookstore co-owner Evon Smith said.
“We use our neighbors,” she said. “We make a lot of decisions as a business: How can we shop local? How can we buy in our own community?
“That’s a commitment we have.”
Hybrid Real Estate buys its supplies locally, as well as services such as its answering service and computer repair, co-owner Bryan Ranstad said.
“When someone is a part of a community,” Ranstad said, “they tend to want to make it better. They tend to want to make it their own.”
— Diane Dietz
“When someone is a part of a community, they tend to want to make it better.”
Bryan Ranstad
Hybrid real estate co-owner
