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Mobile Apps: A Sign Of How Far The Retail Experience Has Fallen

The Wall Street Journal recently ran a story, Mobile Apps Draw in Shoppers, Marketers. In it were highlighted successes such as this, “On the Monday after Thanksgiving, for example, Shopkick offered triple the regular number of reward points to its users at one retailer and found a 68% increase from the previous day in people using the app in participating stores.”

Just more checkins is a success?

But if those checkins don’t lead to additional purchases, what’s the point? Continue reading Mobile Apps: A Sign Of How Far The Retail Experience Has Fallen »

Macys Shows The Power of Events; And the Dangers

This basket itself was a showstopper

9 Elements To Make Any Event A Success

Macy’s annual flower show is in full bloom at their flagship store in NYC (and a few other locations) now through April 11, 2010. If you are in the area, make a trip as it has to be one of the last vestages of when department store events were used to differentiate one over the other.

I was in their store last year and saw two clerks who acted as if it were a hot August and people were miserable.  No energy, no smiles, no encouraging questions or pointing out the “specialness” of the event.  There were other long-term employees who were very proud it was their sixty-fourth show; you could see it in their smiles and hear it in their voices.

Smaller stores still do events such as book signings, story time, trunk shows, parties, live music, movie launches and new product arrivals.  All in the goal of driving new traffic to their shop, Main Street, mall or even city.

The one part that is missing when people talk about doing events is the employees or shop owners.  How will they greet the event?

With welcome arms or as a chance to bitch to the public? Unless this important link is considered, oftentimes the latter citing how it didn’t do anything for them but bring in “lookie-loos,” or worse.  I know, I hear it all the time.

Here’s 9 Elements To Make Any Event A Success:

  1. Know why you are doing it in the first place – to drive trial from new customers who do not know you and to shorten the return to your shop/area/city by customers who know you.  In both cases it is to drive sales.
  2. Create a timetable of explanations to employees, managers and owners with firm dates.
  3. Explain to as many business owners and employees in person as possible why you doing it. Ask for questions ahead of time. Note any potential problems, parking, long wait times, where to get additional information.
  4. Do a flier explaining why you are doing this, what the event entails, start and end times, etc. Even better a 2 min Youtube video that you email around.
  5. Brainstorm some ways individual businesses can help participate – donations for prizes, prepared short updates for their Facebook Fan pages/Tweets.
  6. Consider a contest for employees or shops that gets their buy-in.  If they have a stake in its success, they are much more likely to make it memorable – in a good way.
  7. Get videos during your event of shops full of people, strolling on your sidewalks, etc. Encourage businesses to post their own on their Facebook Fan pages, their own webpages, anywhere they can think of.
  8. After the event hold a meeting to debrief. What went well? What could be improved? Don’t let the grumpy Guses ruin it for everyone – keep focused on how it could be better, lessons learned, etc. What firm numbers did you, your merchants, your shopping district deliver?  We don’t want anecdotal evidence.  Sales up 3%? Write it down.
  9. Create a file with all the information you created prior, during and the debriefing for use in planning another event or when someone says to do it, you’ll have everything in one location.

To truly move the needle of sales, customers who throng the stores should be met with the same wonder and excitement as the customers gazing at the flowers, listening to the music or strolling your downtown.  Remember, the reason you are doing this is to get buy-in that builds the event rather than takes away from all the energy you’ve put into it. Employee pride can make all the difference but it, like having a profitable business, takes work.

To find the prescription to making your business a success, pre-order The Retail Doctor’s Guide To Growing Your Business: A Step-By-Step Approach To Quickly Diagnose, Treat and Cure.

Penney's: The Golden Rule Retail Store

Grand+Opening+JCPenney+First+Ever+Manhattan+OYW5gR1b12BlDid you hear that J.C. Penney, starting in the fall of next year, will become the exclusive licensed seller of Liz Claiborne? If you’re one of those smug shoppers like the NYT shopping critic, you might raise an eyebrow.

Claiborne is pulling their merch from Macy’s and Dillards where it didn’t sell to JC Penney’s where it did.  Analysts all believe it was smart, as do I, but it isn’t from a pricing standpoint.

Why does the same merch sell at JC Penney and not down the street at Macy’s? JC Penney is still grounded in the Golden Rule.

When I moved to Long Beach, California thirty years ago, I needed drapes. I went to J.C. Penney’s where an elderly lady came over and asked if I needed help. Instead of just pointing me to the ready-mades, she took the time to ask the right questions. When she realized I knew nothing about my windows, she politely and carefully showed me how to measure them. Next she showed me some of the products they had. I thanked her, returned home and came back with the measurements. She continued to guide my choices. Afterwards, I went to the management office to offer my compliments. The manager said, “Oh yes, she’s been cited many times over the years for her excellent customer service.”goldenrulestore

Now that I’ve moved to upstate New York, I needed some ready-made drapes for a window. I went there Saturday at the start of their big sale – by mistake. I figured I was in doorbuster hell.  While the four saleswomen were all busy with customers, several of us patiently waited.

Why? Because they continually checked in with us that they would be with us shortly. One woman got on the phone to ask management for someone to ring. They arrived within 10 minutes. Another politely excused herself from helping custom orders to quickly get shoppers on their way. All with a smile on their faces.

After I got home I ordered an additional item online. It came in wrong yesterday – my fault. The people on the line couldn’t have been nicer and more helpful.  The attitude of service is what embodies the JC Penney experience.

J.C. Penney’s was built on service. The original name for the store that started Penney in the dry goods business was The Golden Rule Store. Said Penney, “In setting up a business under the name and meaning of Golden Rule, I was publicly binding myself, in my business relations, to a principle which had been a real intimate part of my family upbringing. To me the sign on the store was much more than a trade name. We took our slogan “Golden Rule Store” with strict literalness. Our idea was to make money and build business through serving the community with fair dealing.”

“Having made the point of a new store by opening up at sunrise on the first day, we then settled on an opening of 7 a.m. Closing time was when no more people in the streets seemed to be heading for the store. Saturday nights, that meant at least midnight. We couldn’t make perpetual-motion machines of ourselves and on Sunday opened the store at 9 a.m.”

It isn’t that Penney’s is the cheapest or off-price; they have a hiring and training policy that shows they are truly there to serve.

Treat yourself sometime and put them to the test.  If nothing else, you’ll get a lesson in what makes one customer choose a store over another and it isn’t due to selection,  location or the fact they sponsor a parade, its about the people who serve them.

Learn how to make your business standout.

Retailers Elephant in the Room – We're Just Not Into You

Ever been jilted and blame the other person for being a jerk? We all have.  Not until a good friend tells us like it is that we are not that great to be around do we look in the mirror and change.

Dear Macy’s, Best Buy, Pottery Barn and the like, now is your wake-up to look in the mirror!

For the past twenty years you have given us your idea of hearts and flowers: 20% of coupons, secret Saturday sales, friends and family nights, and shopping for charity tie-ins.  These have all danced around the elephant in the room – like having a boring date who only talks about himself, we just don’t want to visit you.elephant in room

You’ll continue to try to get us to “come home” for the holidays. When we finally break down and go, we’ll take the deals and run. Then you’ll keep contacting us like the Jon Favreau character’s awkward answering machine scene from the movie Swingers.

It’s no wonder Saks reports sales losses yesterday.  We’re just not that into you.

Many of the major retailers tout “experience” but in many cases – can we just admit it – you really are just Wal-Mart with less polyester.

The same unenthusiastic, bored employees seeing their lives slip away you’d find at a mass merchant.  The hive mentality that lets them find security stocking shelves, avoiding customers and sticking together behind the counter has left us shoppers aloof and alone.  Your pleas to return go unnoticed because we know you haven’t changed.

Sure you’ll try pop-up stores and special events like Fashion Night Out September 10 but the headlines will keep reading, Shoppers Hold Back because you hope we’ll change, not you.

The retailers that are increasing market share – and they’re out there- are taking the long view of the recession as an opportunity to change.

Looking to increase sales whether you’re a major player or mom & pop? Look in the mirror – it’s time for a makeover.  Now! Otherwise, we’ll just sit at home eating our Chunky Monkey ice cream until someone better comes along to sweep us off our feet.  And that’s the next elephant in the room.

What if we stop looking and just accept our aloneness, looking at a blue screen and shopping online?  Then what are you going to do?

Learn how to makeover your business.

©Bob Phibbs 2009

Real Merchants Know Men Wear Pink Underwear In A Recession

The boutiques will outlive the department stores because they are still merchants, we’ll get to that shortly but first…

jockeypinkJockey underwear reported this week that, “sales of pink underwear are soaring as men use their undergarments to cheer them up in the economic crisis.” Jockey claims that sales of their colored Y-front briefs have rocketed by an average of 60% over the last six months – and the baby pink pairs have sold more than any other, seeing a 62% boost in sales over the past three months.”

The UK’s Daily Mail website concludes, “If claims that men are perking themselves up using their underpants is true, it adds a new dimension to lipstick economics – the theory market-watchers attribute to sales of small cosmetic items rising in a recession, or the fact that hemlines rise and fall with the economic state of the country.”

Hold that thought a moment …

finn-portlandI was in Portand, OR for a presentation with the Oregonian newspaper about 6 weeks ago and stumbled on Finn in the upscale shopping district, the Pearl.  The whole store was merchandised with a merchant’s sensibility. Clearly an upscale men ‘s clothing store, it stopped your eyes from wandering with overstuffed, handmade, free-trade toys, antiques and other knickknacks that made you want to browse.

I was surprised to see a large display of fancy socks and underwear. The owner came up to me and told me socks and underwear were becoming the coolest thing to accessorize your wardrobe. “Really?” I asked. “The crazier the better,” he said. footshoesockWe chatted a bit more about the socks made by Duchamp and I ended up getting a pair myself (at right.)  That was the only time he was behind the counter.

Contrast that experience to the one a week prior at Bloomingdale’s, the store who used to be all things trendy, smart and fashionable.  Walking through the men’s aisles I found, like most department stores these days, the gang of three employees talking.  In the men’s furnishings section there were some interesting items but to this day I still have no idea what they were used for or why they were on top of a counter clearly for sale. (You can try to make them out on the counter to the left in the photo below.)

After staring at them for 2-3 minutes, I looked around for help.  Sure enoubloomingdalesgh, the gang of three was behind the castle expecting me to approach so they would graciously stop talking, lower the drawbridge and cross the moat to wait on me.

And here’s the point of this post: it is the boutique operators who will bring us out of the recession. They are the ones who are truly the merchants looking to wow us with new products and convince us to try new things.  They are the ones giving a pulse to America.  They are where you should be shopping.

Contrast the latest trends Jockey reported to your local Macy’s, Lord & Taylor and other mid to upper tier stores where all you’ll see displayed face-out will be a sign, “25% off Jockey” with a mountain of white.

You want to get more customers in a recession? You’ve got to earn it; even if it means you have to be knowledgeable about men wearing pink underwear so you’ll feature the best-selling, colorful ones upfront, along with colorful socks.  And to do that, you have to get employees out from behind the castle and talk up your products.

You can’t invent trends -unless you were Starbucks in the early 90s -  but you can ride them. Merchants know this.

Bob Phibbs, the Retail Doctor, has helped thousands of independent businesses compete by using his approach to business and not discounting.  He speaks to groups large and small how to grow sales in a friendly, engaging and entertaining manner.

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