Ask around.

That’s the key to shopping locally. When buying a product, it’s good to look but it is even better to speak with a clerk, manager or even the owner.

Here is one shopper’s story:

She sought a new flatscreen TV. She saw the flier for a sale on a flatscreen TV at a big-box store to take place on Black Friday. Great, she thought.

But first she thought she would ask a local store. She called a TV store in Geneva, spoke with the owner, and he had the same TV at a better price and it was next year’s model, not last year’s.

While major retailers do sometimes have better deals, a lot of their marketing budget goes toward convincing the public they have the best deals so that consumers won’t even consider the local stores. So then the major retailers charge more anyway.

We have noticed this trend time and again. And everyone knows by now that shopping local keeps jobs in the community.

Here’s another shopper’s story:

He wanted to get a certain kind of beer from Oregon as a gift and just assumed he could only find it in Rochester, where he had seen it one summer day. But at a local event this fall he ran into a beverage distributor who pointed out that the brewery’s products now were on the shelf at a liquor store on the north end of Albert Lea. He went there and he was surprised to find it.

The lessons of both stories are: Don’t make assumptions. The key to success is asking. You never know what you might be surprised to find right in your own community.