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Archive for April, 2009

Obama's First 100 Days and Your Retail Store

oceanlinercolumbusDid you watch the presidential news conference last night or listen on your laptop or radio?  One of the metaphors he used towards the end are pertinent to retailers.  He talked about how long it takes change to occur in Washington, “the ship of state is an ocean liner, not a speed boat.”  He made the point that turning it a few degrees may not be seen soon, or even short-term, but would make the difference in the end when you could looked back in time at the moment the captain had decided to alter course.

I think many retailers have seen themselves as an ocean liner, that change comes slowly.  That’s why we hire our sisters’ friend because we like them, we don’t clear out bad buys of merch, we run the same ad we always did.  In short, we don’t want to change. It’s comfortable.

But we’ve never had times like we’re dealing with now.  Your smart competitors are looking at the wealth of new tools available to market to their customers.  They are speed boats looking to alter course dramatically.

I was talking to a client last week and he told me, “We wouldn’t have needed you last year – we were doing fine.”  But when sales are fine, we rarely change.

My point to you today is to decide if you are a speedboat or an ocean liner.  speed_boat_1Obama had thousands of people advising his running of the ship which is why it was an plodding ocean liner.  Most all of you only have to look in the mirror and decide where you need to go then set a course.

You don’t have the luxury of cruising anymore.

Popeye's Chicken Runs Out Of Chicken, Guts

popeyes2Another amazing tale of idiot behavior from a business appeared yesterday in Rochester, NY and across the country.  You can read all about it in the Democrat and Chronicle.  The franchisees of Popeye’s chicken ran out of chicken.

You can watch a local TV report of it on YouTube here. Get past the racial nature of all the clips’ comments which are numerous and disgusting.  As retailers or small business owners you should recognize damage when you see it.

Just last week we saw Amazonfail where “someone” mysteriously removed gay and health titles from Amazon.com.  Then Domino’s in Conover, NC with the employees boasting on camera how they put food up or wiped it on various parts of their body and then served it.

Now comes the spectacle of franchisees not buying enough chicken to support a major ad campaign of their core product.  It would be like Starbucks saying, “sorry out of coffee.”

I mean, how stupid do you have to be to not go out and buy more chicken from your distributor, Costco, or even several grocery stores to save the day?  Pretty stupid if you are a customer.

I ran into this on a small scale at the mega-grocery store Pavilions in Newport Beach, California.  I’d ordered a pastrami on rye at the deli.  The order taker came back to me, “Sorry, we’re out of rye bread.  You want it on sourdough?”  “Um, can’t you just walk over and get some rye from the bread aisle?” “Sorry sir, we’re not allowed to do that.”  Who eats pastrami on sourdough? I walked out and never came back.

Were Popeye’s franchisees’ thinking, “We’re not going to be making any money on this so we’ll just run out?” Was this was an “accident?” Restaurants know their numbers.  The deal was $4.99, not free.

Some franchisees complained in the press of people “trying to make multiple orders when it clearly said, ‘one per customer.’” Customers hate exceptions – people driving home on a Friday night, tired and looking to feed their family would OF COURSE want to buy more than one.

Did Popeye’s CMO Dick Lynch not have a clue as to how this could play out? I doubt it. They wanted buzz and a “killer promotion” and got it while angering people along the way. Not just anyone but their loyal customers.

The right thing to do would have been for the owner to have been personally handing out rainchecks for another day.  That would have taken guts and saved the sale and the relationship with loyal customers, rather than those franchisees who took the easy way out by taping a sign across the drive-thru speaker and closing early, some in mid-afternoon.

It reminds me of the old days at Sears when they advertised a washer for $99.  The salesmen on the floor called it the golden stake.  It was to lure customers in but if you sold it you were gone.  I believe the words then were, “bait and switch.”

With Popeye’s you just got “bait.”

If you want to create a promotion, you have to plan for what happens when it fails – like we’ve all had with boxes and boxes of widgets to giveaway clogging the back room – and what happens if it is a runaway.

Clearly, something went wrong with Popeye’s promotion and now it is all over the Internet with friends telling friends, “can you believe Popeye’s chicken ran out of chicken?”  Just like I just did to all of you.

How To Spy On Your Retail Competitors and Why

istock-spy-000001571632xsmallMy tip of the week: subscribe to all your competitors’ email newsletters.  From the big-boxes to the mom & pops you can learn a lot by what they choose to feature in their email newsletters.

Yes, most are still stuck in the 50′s mindset that it should just be discounts and cheap stuff but not all.  Once you read what they put out, you can formulate your marketing to include many of their elements.  What about those who are using it as a way to funnel people to a blog? Click on the links and find out what’s on the blog.

What are they choosing to feature in their email blast? How often are they sending them out ? Are they html with pictures or just text? What can I do to copy without copying the email itself? Here are some elements I think are really good.

aaron-emailIf for example you were a picture framer, you should sign up for Aaron Brothers at their website www.aaronbrothers.com.

1) In this week’s email blast you’ll find a subtle marketing message to make your old art look new with new frames.

2) A  coupon at the top to use on anything.  Again, since this is to only people who are on their list – I would support this discount wholeheartedly.

3) The biggest part of the email is devoted to Mother’s Day showing a great graphic, you can do a custom job for as little as $45 (but their salespeople will help you see how you could spend $85.)

4) The lower third is for stock framing for $12.95 so even a kid can afford it and we see a mom with kids to reinforce all of the message to “get ready for Mother’s Day.”

5) Just about the last thing we read is about a free fingerpainting event in-store the day before Mother’s Day.  Implying “Dads this would be a great gift idea!”

6) Next to the last thing we see on the page? The address of the store.

Could you do this for your outdoor furniture store? Your jewelry store? Your window fashions store? Your sewing shop?  You bet but it takes vision and time to think.  Look at the elements they include, not the least of which is the forward-to-a-friend.

Also notice at the top the Twitter and Facebook logos so you can follow them and get updates. You could add that too.

If you need help with ideas for where to spend your time working on your business instead of fretting about your business, your competitors are giving you free instructions – just sign up.

Want more tips and tricks? Sign up to be a member of the Retail Doc’s Retail Roundup where you’ll learn all sorts of free retail sales, training and marketing ideas.

Retail Sales Training from Susan Boyle’s Audience

I watched the YouTube clip of Susan Boyle on BBC’s Britain’s Got Talent singing I Dreamed A Dream from the Broadway show Les Miserables today. It originally aired about ten days ago and the clip has been seen by close to 13 million people so far. Lots of articles have been written about her … here’s my take.

What is so shocking to me is to watch the audience before she sang. The judgment, the roll of the eyes, the heckling, the outright laughing at this middle-aged woman daring to think she had talent. susanboyle

The song she chose became art imitating real life:
There was a time when men were kind
When their voices were soft
And their words inviting
There was a time when love was blind
And the world was a song
And the song was exciting
There was a time
Then it all went wrong

Before she sang those words, she stood on that stage and took whatever came her way from the judges and audience, both eager to witness failure.

How many times have we judged a customer who looked like they would be asking for loose change rather than paying several thousand dollars in cash for a purchase? How many times after a sale when a customer presented their black American Express card did we say to ourselves, “If I only knew, I would have done better?” I know I have.

But that’s the trick in retail isn’t it? We get to work on ourselves with every new person we meet. Preconceived notions have to go out the window or we perish.

Today, approach a customer as if they were someone worthy of respect, interest and care. Hold the cynicism and judgment for another day.

And if you struggle with it consider it might be time to let go of that behavior. We shouldn’t be shocked with the Susan Boyle’s of the world.

It’s easy to be nasty. Higher sales comes from making relationships by valuing both your employees and your customers. Don’t get comfortable being in the audience.

Luxury Market Not Dead – Newswires To Cry Foul

istock_000001389174xsmallHave you grown  tired of the Polly Paranoids who have pulled the wool over our eyes the past year that luxury is dead?  I have.

The ones who boldly claimed in articles and on covers of business publications, “we are in a whole new world where luxury is dead. And this isn’t just a trend, it is a fundamental shift for  shoppers.” Yeah, right. Got it, end of world right around the corner. Sack and ashes. Bad times here to stay. Life sucks.

If that’s the case then why, why did the news come in from Paris that LVMH, the biggest luxury goods company including the Louis Vuitton brand post a profit?  Don’t look for widespread coverage of that fact on cable news channels or your local TV station.  If anything they’ll have a talking head guy on to  say, “yeah BUT…”

For them, Wal-Mart and the Dollar Store are all we could be shopping at now and forever. After all, wasn’t it just about a month ago we saw Warren Buffet decrying a “new world” after the economy “fell off a cliff?”

A WSJ  article by Max Colchester details all the brands under LVMH in the article in today’s edition.  Here was one quote, “Mega brands are producing results ahead of the market average,” says Luca Solca, a luxury analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein.

Point of this post? The world is still spending on luxury. Hold on to your core customer. Sell your merch.  Don’t destroy your brand by discounting. Someone’s getting the $$$ – look in the mirror – maybe its your fault.

If you’d like some help, remember the Retail Doctor makes house calls.

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