To remain small shopkeeper in a big city as Paris proves increasingly more difficult when the urban proximity and sociability attenuate because of practices of consumption holding more with the trade fame of the place and the shops organization. More numerous in the South of the capital than within beautiful areas the small shopkeepers and the craftsmen protect with difficulty occupations much their know-how loses of its urban prestige. While an associative logic aims at federating the shopkeepers around the proximity as the stake in the service provided to the customer, it is however an individual logic which prevails so much the trading situations vary according to their strategies and the shopping space. The proximity can represent quite at the same time an asset that a constraint when the shopkeeper depends on it strongly.