If You Build It They Will Come
“Hey Dad, You wanna have a catch?”
It is hard not to get choked up.
The movie is not about building a field, it is about a son reconciling with his father. The field was the place where it happened. In the same sense, your store is where the experience happens and where long-term relationships are built. Relationships that endure and where mistakes are forgiven.
Significant investment goes into establishing a brand, building a store, and purchasing your products and that becomes the focus. All my sales training on the floor was directed at features, advantages, and benefits. I now realize that it is really all about focusing on the relationship. If you build the community, they will come. Not because you have great products, which is expected, but because you make your customers feel welcome, engaged, and truly feeling the experience. It is not that you make them look good, you make them feel good by how they look.
We have our own present experience to validate, how you make them feel, is what works. Conventional wisdom and all the pundits claimed that brick-and-mortar was dead during Covid, and that customers were now educated in shopping online. The opposite was true, as we all know traffic stormed back because people were hungry to be social, to feel an experience, and to be a part of a community.
This is the challenge and opportunity for retailers.
It starts with having your team willing to extend themselves to their customers, to be curious and to engage. So much is left unsold. A want or need is unfulfilled because time is not taken to learn and ask. How we embrace our customers should be the driving force behind all Indie Retail.
Last week, my wife Carol and I went to William Sanoma, West Elm, Pottery Barn, and Crate and Barrel shopping for a new kitchen table and chairs. Not one of the stores was busy and all had two to three staff members on the floor. No one approached us. We circled the entire floor of each store. Their conversations between themselves were more urgent. We then left and went to a local furniture store. We were immediately attended to and became happy customers. This same story plays out constantly. This is why Indie Retail prospers and why Independent Specialty retail has a very bright future.
I have often used this famous quote, “Know one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.” Indie retailers have a significant advantage that is as true today as it was before the emergence of the chains and big box stores.
We are not competing for your customers’ dollars, we are competing for their time. We cannot afford to be anything less than excellent. Focus on the relationships, brainstorm ways to improve them, train on how to extend yourself to customers, and then as you build on that, they surely will come.
Onwards, and Upwards,
Marc Weiss - Co-founder, Management One