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Online entrepreneurs compete with big-boxes as they revive downtowns across the country.

Online entrepreneurs compete with big-boxes

Downtown merchants are reaping steady increases in revenue as a result of Internet-based sales. E-commerce enables them to turn over their inventory much more quickly, allowing store owners to add more products and variety to sales floors.

Almost every significant American economic era is apparent in this neat as a pin city on Lake Michigan’s western shore. The city’s agrarian heritage is reflected in the crop and dairy farms that lie at the city’s edge, and a beer malting plant at the center of town, as it has been since 1843. The maritime and industrial eras are represented by a coal-fired ferry that crosses Lake Michigan twice a day, and the steel cranes that are built here by the 103-year-old Manitowoc Company. The rust belt period, characterized by manufacturing job losses and downtown decline, is still felt in slow population growth, modest housing prices, and shuttered plants.

Now in the early years of the 21st century a new economic era spurred by the Internet is taking hold and contributing to a downtown revival in this city of 34,000. Visitors use the Internet to book rooms at bed and breakfasts, downtown hotels, and passage on the Lake Michigan ferry. Professional offices, no surprise, are using the Internet for research, to display their services, and for email. But most apparent is the wealth of interesting stores that have helped Manitowoc establish what downtown development specialists call a “recreational” shopping experience.

By Keith Schneider
Great Lakes Bulletin News Service

Full Story: http://mlui.org/growthmanagement/fullarticle.asp?fileid=16965

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