Porter Square is rapidly becoming a Moebius strip mall. If it wasn’t enough to travel a half-mile from one White Hen Pantry to the next down Massachusetts Avenue, there came the Big Picture Framing shop at 2044 Massachusetts Ave., a barely significant 0.3 miles distant from the Corners Picture Framing Superstore by Star Market.
Now the defunct photo shop at 2032 Massachusetts Ave. is becoming a Cartridge World — a refurbisher and reseller of toner cartridges for printers — because, apparently, the SaveOnInks.com kiosk at 1 Porter Square, a significantly bare 0.4 miles away, suggested the market was ripe for competition.
How weird is this? The next nearest SaveOnInks site is about four miles away, across the river at the Prudential Center. The next nearest Cartridge World is in East Weymouth, more than 20 miles away. So there is plenty of room to spread out, making the reason the chains must go head-to-head within a few blocks of each other elusive at best. The possibilities include:
Someone has decided to perform a perverse economics experiment that will soon drive down the cost of toner cartridges in Porter Square to virtually nothing;
Someone else has decided to perform a perverse sociological experiment to keep Porter Square as dull and silly as possible, and this was the most dramatic step possible in that direction after the counterproductively exciting opening of Porter Square Books;
There is an aberrantly huge demand for toner cartridges in the Porter Square area, enough for both businesses to thrive;
The much larger Cartridge World intends to slay the upstart SaveOnInks by directly challenging it site for site;
Someone didn’t do very good market research.
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2 comments:
In my neighborhood, it's Indian restaurants. It's as if one can't open unless two others open at the same time.
Not that I have anything against Indian food. No indeed. I need it more than I need toner cartridges, or at least more frequently.
I hear you. This area, too, is rotten with Indian food, if such a word is appropriate, especially in Central, Harvard and Davis squares — but oddly, this abundance does not result in particularly inexpensive food. I guess they'll keep coming, then, up to the tipping point?
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