Are You Running Increases?

  

 Email Article  

Tweet  

  

It’s been almost three years since Lehman Brothers collapsed and all hell broke loose. Are you running increases, or running decreases and still chalking it up to the economy?

Last week, Borders started to liquidate. The news stories said it was because ecommerce has changed the landscape for booksellers, that eReaders are significantly altering the marketplace. They noted that Borders had taken on significant levels of debt in the middle of the last decade. What the stories didn’t point out, however, was the real reason that I believe Borders didn’t make it. Their stores weren’t nearly as compelling as Barnes & Noble’s stores.

Barnes & Noble continues on (with their own issues to work through, to be sure), while Borders liquidates. Borders was able to muddle along for almost three years after Lehman Brothers came unglued. If Borders’ stores were generating sales increases, were generating positive cash flow, the debt service problem they struggled with could have been worked through, and they’d be going forward. They had almost three years to figure it out, and, in the end, they couldn’t.

Independent retailers, regardless of market segment, have an important advantage over major national retailers. The major national chains can only set their stores, train their troops, send out their promotional emails and sale flyers, and wait for the customers to come.

Independent retailers have a much greater ability to reach out to their customer base proactively, because they’ve had the opportunity to build much more personal relationships with their customers, often on a first-name basis, one customer at a time, one transaction at a time. They can target their customers much more discreetly, and engage them much more directly.

That alone clearly isn’t enough to assure sales increases. But it does offer independent retailers a way to rebuild sales volume with concerted focus and effort. It gives independent retailers the path to rebuilding their sales volume the same way they built their businesses initially, by providing each and every customer with a compelling and memorable experience, every time they visit.

It’s easy to point to the economy and say there’s little that you can do. But that’s the path of least resistance. It’s been three years since the Lehman Brothers collapse. The economy was just as bad a year ago, if not worse. If you’re not running increases, it’s time to raise the level of your game, and get it done.