Many large business with lots of money do a terrible job.

Retail Gripes

By Dan Furman

This article is more along the lines of general marketing than it is writing. But since we all visit retail stores, I'm sure many of you will find it interesting.

I spent the first seven years of my career in retail, working my way up from salesclerk to buyer. Then I sold product to retail stores for a few years. I think I know the business pretty well, and thus feel qualified to comment on it.

Ok, here are my two biggest gripes:

I'm in your store because I want it now.

When I worked in retail, many retail businesses and suppliers were embracing new computer technology to utilize something called JIT, short for "Just in Time". The idea behind this is it keeps store inventory levels low - the store figures it sells ten widgets a week, so they only stock 5 and get two deliveries of widgets a week. By eliminating overstock (called "the back" by us customers, as in "maybe you have some in the back?"), profits go up.

However, there's a flaw - what if someone buys all five widgets Monday, and the next delivery isn't until Thursday? What happens to a customer that needs a widget on Tuesday?

I'll tell you what happens - the customer goes somewhere else. And if this happens enough, you start to get a negative reputation. Over-reliance on JIT is a terrible long-term strategy.

My local Best Buy is like that - I shop at Best Buy a lot, but I'm starting to notice that unless I'm after something VERY mainstream, the chances of them having it in stock go way down. They have a ton of high volume items (like a promotional DVD player), but carry precious few units of anything that might not be a "hot seller" (see how many different DVD recorders are *in stock* at any given time - in two months of looking at DVD recorders, they never had more than half of their selection in stock).

Oh, the clerk helpfully suggests "Hey, you can get it at best buy dot com", but that's really not the answer. Using the internet to back up your JIT policy makes me even angrier - if I wanted to buy it online, I would have. I'm in your store because I want it right now. Why don't you have it?

Ok, you have what I want - can someone PLEASE take my money?

My local Home Depot has about 12 registers. You know how many are open at any given time? Maybe two. Nine people on line at one register, and the manager doesn't think it's important to open another one. I have left carts full of merchandise in Home Depot and other stores because I refuse to wait an unreasonable amount of time to pay for my items.

How long is unreasonable? More than five minutes in most cases. I'll make an exception if the store is obviously busy and many registers are humming. Hey, I can be reasonable. But if there are only two registers open and the wait is ten or fifteen minutes, it's obvious the store feels collecting my money is not that important. Bye.

And I have to pick on Best Buy again - they have an army of clerks on at all times, but only two cashiers. Seriously - for much of the day, it seems the clerks outnumber the customers. Why do you need so many salesclerks, but only have two cashiers? It makes no sense.

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