'Not-Amazon' Owner Wants To Help Toronto Businesses By Not Giving Jeff Bezos More Money
Torontonians are being urged to shop local during the city's lockdown, and one resident has created a hilarious Toronto online shopping website to help people do just that.
Ali Haberstroh is the owner of Not-Amazon.ca, a website that lets people find local businesses in Toronto, Halifax, and Calgary to shop from.
Patrons can sort through stores by location and by category in order to find the best place for them — then head through to that store's website and continue shopping.
Haberstroh spoke to Narcity over email about creating the site and her intentions behind it.
Editor's Choice: Ontario Police Are Warning You Not To Open Your Door To Deliveries After An Assault
A huge motivation behind the site was not giving Jeff Bezos any more money.
Ali Haberstroh
The reaction has been far greater than Haberstroh anticipated. She runs the website entirely on her own in her spare time, but still got over 800 business submissions in the past 24 hours and 50k visitors over the past few days.
And Haberstroh doesn't take any cut — she's just operating the website for free and for fun, she says.
"Small businesses are reaching out and telling me that they're having a good amount of people mentioning they found their business through the site," Haberstroh said, "which is the whole reason I did it, so it feels great!"
And despite the digs at Jeff Bezos, she's not too worried about any litigation.
"As my dad said to me on the phone the other day, the funniest possible way to end 2020 would be is if I got taken to court by Amazon," Haberstroh said. "I have no fear of that happening but I'm still keeping my fingers crossed that it doesn't."
