This month’s Armchair Mayor did not get shortchanged on a name, but lucky for us, she has the intriguing story to back it up. Ladies and gentlemen, we give you Katrina Scotto di Carlo, the co-founder of Supportland.
The last name arrived here from a small island off Naples. Her husband Michael’s father brought an ingrained entrepreneurial spirit to the New World—specifically Brooklyn—and he passed it on to his son. Katrina met Michael when she was 18 and, eventually, this approach to life rubbed off on her. It would only be a matter of time before they launched their own business together, but what would it be? The idea came not in an “Aha!” moment but in a slow evolution.
We’ve all been asked at the big chain stores if we have a rewards card, and, if not, do we want one? You might say something polite like, “No thanks, shopping here is reward enough.” Or you might go a little further out there and say, “Not today, I can’t handle any more responsibility right now.” The truth is, if you carried a different card for every store, your wallet would look like a pocket dictionary. But they keep asking, so obviously the cards are good for business, right?
What Katrina and Michael came up with was the idea of a rewards card to support the local economy—one card that works at a whole group of small, independent businesses, building up points that can be cashed in for deals throughout the system. That is how Supportland was born, and it seems to be a hit with over 90 businesses involved.
Perhaps the term “cashed in” is a little misleading. This isn’t an alternative form of currency or anything like that. It’s merely a way for these local, independent businesses to have the same technology that the big chains use.
Incidentally, the phrase, “buy local” is now used as a new way to mislead the consumer. This is called local-washing, in which national chains use the local angle and even sell through independent-style stores that are not what they seem. With the Supportland card, you will know you’re helping your community by keeping the dollars here.
Ideas like this get noticed, and there has been lots of interest in spreading the Supportland concept to other parts of the country—maybe even to the rest of the world. Who knows? Someday Katrina and Michael could fly back to the little island off Naples and use their card to shop locally there, too.
That is all still an ambitious dream. For now, though, they live in the St. Johns neighborhood raising their two kids, running Supportland, and helping Portland’s small businesses survive through some tough times. That’s enough to make the name Katrina Scotto di Carlo shine even more.
NN: How is Supportland doing? What’s the latest? You once said on a radio show that it is an “evolving mammal”? Care to elaborate on that?
KSD: Sometimes I get carried away with my enthusiasm for Supportland. I do tend to think of Supportland as a living thing, like a blue whale, because it’s intelligent, evolving, and fun-loving. It’s constantly surprising me. Most people just see the surface stuff about Supportland—nifty graphics, getting rewards, finding cool businesses, etc.—but when you work inside of it, it’s an even deeper experience. From my perspective, it’s a revolution in collaborative economies, and it’s running on this elegant platform that my husband Michael hand-built. The technology platform is hugely important and really gives the whole thing those whale-like attributes. I regard it with a lot of awe. Dude is a genius.
NN: Do you think city government gives an unfair advantage to big chains at the expense of local independents?
KSD: Yes. The average city government ... tends to give unfair advantage to big chains. As Stacey Mitchell points out on the blog New Rules Project, it’s difficult to track all the money flowing since it can take the form of property tax exceptions, sales tax rebates, or job tax credits. But estimates by Good Jobs First, a nonprofit trying to track all these incentive programs, point to the several billions as the price tag our communities pay. The real problem is that the short term shine from “creating 300 new jobs” has more political currency than the long term sustainability of supporting local entrepreneurs that will create 300 new jobs. Countless studies have shown that big-box stores eliminate more retail jobs then they create, shrink the volume of activity in a local economy, and displace numerous small and mid-sized stores. Groovy “economic gardening” programs that support local business owners and empower them to create solutions on a neighborhood scale are what we need, but the numbers can be more subjective. Who can count how many folks were inspired to jump in and start a business by taking a Mercy Corps NW business class? The PDC’s Neighborhood Economic Development Strategy is moving forward with some nifty economic gardening features built in. I know a lot of folks are apprehensive about government initiatives, but I’m a ridiculous optimist. I think Portland has some challenges today and several on the horizon, but we also have a citizenry of doers and problem solvers.
NN: What would you do as mayor to help small businesses more?
KSD: I would bust out education-focused outreach and foster crowd-sourced solutions. I still hear perfectly reasonable people resigning [sic] that chain stores are some sort of solution for getting more jobs or serving under-served communities. The research shows that a chain store is akin to installing a economic drain in your community with most of the cash flowing to (often) out-of-state headquarters and overseas to goods-producing countries like China. Portland is busting at the seams with creative minds. It seems completely unreasonable that we can’t find more creative solutions for job growth and helping under-served neighborhoods thrive. Let’s have city-wide think tanks on topics like “WTF do we do with this empty big box store?” or “How the hell are these people supposed to eat when the only food option around is a liquor store and a Plaid Pantry?” We’d be stunned by the brilliance that comes out of that.
NN: You must talk to lots of small business owners. How would you gauge their mood right now?
KSD: I talk to a ton of businesses, and the mood changes business to business. I have the luxury of mixing mostly with proactive, collaborative business owners because that’s who Supportland attracts. The one commonality across the board is that our businesses are pouring energy into fostering customer relationships. Recessions really seem to test the customer’s relationship to a business. It’s a strange scale, but customers are weighing their relationship with a certain business against the perceived benefits of getting the same item online, for example. Almost every business I talk to understands this scale and has poured energy into building meaningful relationships with their customers.
NN: You brought up Occupy Portland in an email. How does that tie in with your message of buying locally?
KSD: Changing up the paradigm requires the (nonviolent) fighters on the front lines, and it requires the nerds building out solutions. We’re in the nerd camp and are showing our solidarity with the movement by keeping laser focus on the local economy. But hellz yeah, I love the communal clarity that the Occupy movement has snapped us into.
NN: If you had a chance to address the People of Portland, what would you say?
KSD: I would say, yes, we’re awesome. We score at the top of most national polls like “bike friendliest city” and so on. But we need to make sure that we’re laying down the foundation so our future is even brighter. We need to make sure that the rad neighborhood business districts that were grown organically through low rent and a DIY spirit can keep flourishing even as the economy shifts. We need to make education a priority so that the future crop of Portlanders—the leaders and zine makers and physicists—are inspired to give back to the community because their education was so rad. We need to work with populations who still feel marginalized in Portland today so that we can heal the community with our über-creative solutions. Portland has some neat bridges and gorgeous buildings, but really this city is great because of the people and the creative I’m-gonna-actually-build-and-pull-off-this-crazy-idea spirit of those people. The most important thing we can do for our future is support the people, from tiny kindergartners to developmentally disabled folks to new immigrants to young entrepreneurs to our lovely elders. Every Portlander has something wonderful to offer this city.
Disclosure: Supportland is a partner of Neighborhood Notes.
