Retail, in the eyes of the everyday customer

In the offline retail world malls and departmental stores exist for four reasons:

1. It is a cost effective alternative for a retailer (building stores for each brand is expensive)
2. It is convenient because it saves the customer from making multiple trips
3. It is easier to remember Macy’s than the 400 brands they carry
4. It builds trust, I can be confident Macy’s extensively evaluates brands they carry

In the online world distances between stores is one url. This effectively eliminates the first two reasons why malls exist. Right now the entire ecommerce landscape is built on niches, we have specialty strollers and specialty bonsais, but will this soon change? In a world where distances disappear would customers want to find specialists or is mall-ification inevitable? I certainly don’t have the answer…. do you?

I present another perspective in The future of eTail article.

As technology gets better retailers will increasingly try virtualization in the belief that it’ll make customers happy. While I think this is a false assumption the bigger problem is poor execution. Retailers like Sears and Brookstone have horrible implementations:

Others make a valiant effort but fail, Clerkandteller.com is an example:

Here is an awesome ‘concept’ developed by RED Interactive Agency: http://amadeo.ff0000.com/

As you all know the world of retail is presently living in the house of pain. Last week I had a long conversation with my cousin who works for a big retailer in the home improvement space. That section of the market has been facing the full brunt of the soft housing market so I wanted to get news from the frontline. My cousin was rather glum about the outlook and believes this is just the tip of the iceberg for retail and the economy at large. While I respect his opinion and that of George Soros, at least for the retail market, I believe this contraction is a blessing in disguise.

Think about it, what does Macy’s actually do? Well, they buy products manufactured by underpaid people in third world locations. They focus on in store displays, marketing and CEO pay and leave the rest to consumers who, up until now, we happy to just buy. Basically, most profits generated through production efficiencies and global arbitrage are not trickling down to product innovation. What we have at stores are mediocre products being sold by mediocre salespeople. The correction in the retail sector will essentially bubble up good retailers, so I think this is a good trend.

At the end of the day every retailer should understand they serve customers by introducing and guiding them to the best possible products at reasonable prices.

Orvis has nothing to fear.

Over the next few years online retailers will increasingly start depending on video as a selling tool. Once ready for video these etailers would gain much by studying williams-sonoma.com. Not only is the company a pioneer but their videos are high quality and really accentuate the shopping experience. Excellent execution, Mr. Patrick Connolly.

In the previous post I noted that the quality of an ecommerce site strongly suggests the overall health of the retailer. Well, williams-sonoma.com is a great example of that.

I am an infomercial junkie and two weeks ago was introduced to Kinoki Detox Foot Pads®. Eventually I found myself on their site but was surprised to learn buykinoki.com gets over 286,000 monthly visitors. In the last six months buykinoki.com has gone from non-existence to becoming the 6,450th most visited website in the US.

Traffic:

It’s amazing how much one can tell by simply looking at a retailers ecommerce site. Over the months I’ve severely criticized Wilsons Leather (here and here), and now, the company is finally admitting failure.

This morning Chain Store Age (login required) reported:

Wilsons The Leather Experts Inc. will close the majority of its 260 mall locations and cut more than 1,000 jobs, the company said Friday.

Wilsons will keep 100 stores open, revamping them under its new “Studio” concept, which is focused on fashion accessories from major brands for women. All stores should be remodeled by August.

Goodbye, old fool.

This morning I got a special email from Wilsons Leather. The email informed me I was getting an exclusive additional 20% off for being a member of their mailing list. I was stoked.

But then, at the bottom of the promo I saw a link that let me forward the email to a friend. So I forwarded it to myself and discovered this offer was also valid for my friends who were not part of the mailing this.

But what really got me upset was when I went to wilsonsleather.com and saw, right at the top of the page, the same discount on their homepage, open to everyone!

It is true that the free shipping with the 20% discount was indeed only for email subscribers. Had I been the marketing manager for the site I would have only sent information about free shipping to my subscribers and prevented them getting upset to discover that the special 20% discount was open for all.

add to cart for email list:

add to cart for rest:

The image below is a direct screenshot from the homepage of worldmarket.com:

Did you notice the cute Valentine Truffle Bears? I did too, and I clicked on it. The only problem is Valentine Truffle Bears aren’t available for purchase. Clicking the bear picture took me to this page:

Worse still, searching for Valentine Truffle Bears on the site leads to an apology page:

And worldmarket.com is not alone, they are in the esteemed company of HickoryFarms.com (click on link to see the error they made)

Email marketing, by and large, is a way for marketers to manage recall through saturation. Academically we all realize flooding is bad (unclassy) marketing but because it works we do it anyway. Fortunately, the good folk at Yelp.com have decided to try something different. Their editorial team actually parsed customer experiences and comments and created a well written, well linked Valentines day email for the Chicago market. If you think I am being biased know that I absolutely hate Yelp.com and believe their “open for anyone to rank and review” model churns out constant duds. That being said, I feel no shame admitting that their email marketing strategy is fantastic.

Other email marketing articles: Email marketing: The next generation, I love you, but please slow down, Email Marketing – Subject line

For the last two months I’ve been searching for a pair of headphones specifically designed for running. Searching online hasn’t helped me find a perfect pair. That being said I have found some personal Blogs etc but this is not sufficient because I want to hear the reassuring voice of an expert. This, then, is the basis of my idea. We have social shopping sites like thisnext.com, we also have comparison shopping sites like PriceGrabber.com. What we don’t have is a site that reviews retailer products the way CNET.com reviews electronic products. If such a site already exists please point me to it, I really need those running headphones.