Over the years I have heard and read about how big chain stores have been putting small local (a.k.a. mom and pop) shops out of business. I never really paid much attention to news like that as long as I was saving money at those national chain stores, and usually I was.
It didn’t really hit me until a few years ago Brian had casually mentioned how a newly opened Home Depot at his home town in Michigan was having a negative impact on his father’s gardening supplies business. I was embarrassed to have been so insensitive to the news, like millions of consumers.
Worst yet, now some experts are finding out how these every-day-low-prices-guaranteed national chains (ahem-WalMart-ahem) are really doing to the American economy. It’s turned a “need-based” consumer culture into a want-based consumer culture. There’s so much junk in most American homes that there’s now a growing trend in renting self-storages to store all the stuff that most people don’t need in the first place. It’s such an irony that Brian’s family decided to open a self storage facility after conceding defeat to competition with Home Depot.
Jib Jab is a site that used to create mostly political satire animations. But their latest work, Big Box Mart, accurately captured the economic and clutural trend in the United States. If you don’t agree with the underlining message, at least you’ll get a good laugh out of the silly animation.