The Declaration of Independents

"You can't miss BIBA when you're in Boulder," says Stacy Mitchell, author of The Hometown Advantage. "The signs, coffee mugs, and bookmarks are everywhere. There's a high level of conversation in stores and on the radio about independent business. It makes people think about how they're spending their money." BIBA slogans that appear in print ads and window decals include "Put Your Money Where Your House Is" and "You're Not a Clone. Why Shop at One?"

There are at least a dozen local retail alliances like BIBA around the country. "It's all very recent," says Mitchell. "It's been amazing." Mitchell believes that local business owners are realizing that when a chain store comes to town, it's not just traditional retailers that get hurt. "There's a secondary impact on services, definitely," says Al Norman, a Wal-Mart watcher who runs a Web site called Sprawl-busters.com. He points out that when the big boys hit town, local accounting firms, business-cleaning services, insurance companies, and wholesalers also take a hit.

"I think new members see BIBA as a good investment more than something altruistic," says Milchen. As word of the alliance's success has spread, people have started calling from other cities and towns. As a result, Milchen is helping to launch the American Independent Business Alliance, an umbrella group designed to seed alliances and provide resources. "The interest is coast-to-coast," Milchen says.

And that's how the movement spreads, from one city to the next across the country. Two years ago it hit Tucson, when a group of competing restaurants agreed to forge a united front to fight the incursion of chains. They called themselves Tucson Originals, and their slogan is "Think Globally...Eat Locally." The restaurateurs agreed to pool their resources for group promotions. Apparently, they sparked something. Soon the statewide Arizona Independent Restaurant Alliance was born to negotiate with food suppliers. Tucson Originals was also the model for the Council of Independent Restaurants of America. The national group has spawned restaurant alliances in Atlanta, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Providence, and Washington, D.C.

And if it can work for restaurants, why not for the insurance industry? Tim Hyland helped build something called Agents Helping Agents for independent insurance agents. One day Hyland, who owns an agency in Louisville, hopped in his car and started traveling through the bluegrass backwoods of Kentucky. He encountered one discouraged agency owner after another. He encountered plenty of cynicism, too. The owners wanted to know, How are you going to help? Hyland understood their despair. "The independent-insurance-agency business...has been negative, negative, negative," he says. "Insurance companies have been consolidating and pulling out of certain areas. Agents have been dropping like flies, and commissions have been cut. There's a general attitude of 'I can't do this. I can't stay in the game.'" But Hyland kept going door-to-door. Today membership in his alliance has swelled to 35 agencies in central Kentucky and southern Indiana. The alliance aggregates about $45 million in written premiums. Last March $138,000 was returned to its members in the form of bonuses from the insurance companies.

"A backroom partnership" -- that's what Hyland calls what he and others like him are doing. The members of Agents Helping Agents aren't just getting money back; they're also getting help running their businesses. Hyland is still going door-to-door across the state doing things like technology training. "We think local people want to buy from local agents," he says. "We've created a sense of purpose and a sense of hope that maybe this way we can control our destiny."

The Rise of the Fourth Economy
The movement is grassroots but it's organized. One reason: the rise of cooperatives. In recent times, the National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA), in Washington, D.C., has witnessed an "explosion" in the number of small-business co-ops, according to association CEO Paul Hazen. "Today there are at least 250," he notes. "Five years ago there were maybe 50." And there are many more operating under the NCBA's radar.

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