Some Different Ideas
By Rick Segel
The magic word is different!
Nothing has changed. It has always been that way. Maybe retailers or small
business people have just forgotten that. Different creates curiosity,
different creates interest, different SELLS. Customers or potential
customers never come into a business and say, "Show me the same old thing !"
They always say show me something I haven't seen before, show me something new,
show me the latest. Show me something different. Well, that's not exactly
true. Sometimes we want the same old thing. When I go to the supermarket, I want
the same old bag of potatoes, the same white bread, the same milk. When it comes
to commodity items, we want the same. But how many people make money selling the
basics? You guessed it—just the large stores, the discount stores that talk
about service, but don't mean the same type of service we were once accustomed.
Are basics a dirty word for the small business person? Well, maybe not a dirty
word, but rather a playing field that was once was very lucrative but now a
place where only fools would dare to play anymore. See what I mean, even the
times are different!
So what is the secret to success. It's simple. Sell different
items, in a different way, to different people.
Well, maybe the same people, but they have all changed with the times, and now
they are different. After all aren't we all a little different?
So what does all this have to do with RUNNING MY STORE? Just about
everything. The rules have changed. No business can do business the same way it
used to do business, and expect to get different results. Didn't someone call
that the definition of "insanity"? In order for any business, including
downtowns, to attract new business and to get the same business as before, the
rules of retailing must change. What made a store great 35 years ago won't work
today. On second thought maybe they will, but you just can't open a store and
expect business to just walk through the front door.
Fight the tendency of doing the same old thing over and over again. It might
work in the short run but it will only eventually hurt you. Look for new lines.
Try different displays and even rotate your help. Make your store an exciting
place to shop or at the least a place where things are always different.
Then you’ll have your customers saying things like, “Let's check them
out today. Things are always different.”
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