Welcome to our first Shop Talk Newsletter! We hope you find it informative. If there are topics you would like to hear about in future newsletters, feel free to send us an email.
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IS YOUR STORE CARRYING MERCHANDISE THAT HAS "JUMPED THE SHARK"?
Are you giving your customers the message through the products that you are carrying that what they buy in your store is the same stuff they can buy anywhere and everywhere?
It is getting more and more difficult for small retailers to obtain products that are distinctive, fresh, and that will bring credit to their stores and repeat business. This applies in virtually all categories including toys, food products, candles, footwear, jewelry, sporting goods, clothing, accessories, and electronics among others. Smaller stores feel compelled to buy the names their customers know such as Polo, Nike, Sony, Kate Spade, Burt’s Bees, etc. rather than doing the harder work involved in finding lines and items that offer better values, styles, fashion and features but are more difficult to locate. Why bother since customers will buy the “name brands”…and if they turn over and the margins are OK there is no problem, right?
WRONG!!!!!
Your store buyer’s job is to separate your store from the others and a key method to accomplish this is to find unique and special items that are not in other stores yet will interest and enthuse customers. When customers like these items and/or recommend them to others, they must come back to your store to buy more hence these items create loyalty and enhance your store brand. If you sell a Nike or Polo or a similar well distributed product consumers know they can go anywhere and find more so that even if well liked they do little or nothing for your store. In fact in most cases they produce a host of negatives for your store which any small store which has done business with a Nike or Kate Spade would verify. No matter when you write your orders, the big stores get all the new items first and often they get exclusives not even available to others. Many seasons you only get a small percentage of your total purchases and much is late. Frequently your late shipments are arriving at the same point in time that they start shipping they same items to off-pricers such as Marshalls, TJ’s, and Filene’s Basements and at the same time when dept stores start to mark down. You have placed yourself in a “no win” situation. We advise our clients not to carry any brands that are carried by department stores or discounts stores with very few exceptions because the smaller store can only lose when this happens. “It sells” may not be good enough if these products are destroying your store brand and image.
We use the term “jumped the shark”*(see definition below) to describe those lines whose very popularity destroy their merit. Instead of giving in to the unreasonable terms that Nike (and similar brands in all categories) will impose your store, there is the “next Nike” out there and it is your job to find it and excite your customers about it. “Just do it” and you will be involved in the very essence of the art of buying. Good buyers hunting down fresh products rely on quality data, know how to analyze it and also have market related instincts they use and trust. The balance they achieve using information and instincts is essentially the balance between art and science that is present in all the great stores. These buyers realize that lines that are now special will some day reach a level of popularity and mass distribution that will cause them to “jump the shark” and require the store to drop them quickly. This is the reality of the current Wal-Mart – One Day Sale world, you cannot be vendor monogamous, and you cannot have marriages with your vendors…on the contrary you must be constantly shuffling the deck and “kicking to the curb” lines no longer appropriate to the smaller store. To do so you must be constantly in the market (electronically and physically) and you must always see that shark coming before your customers do.
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* jump the shark - definition
A term to describe a moment when something that was once great has reached a point where it will now decline in quality and popularity.
Origin of this phrase comes from a Happy Days episode where the Fonz jumped a shark on water-skis. This was labeled the lowest point of the show.
It's not easy leaving your mark on the English language. For every Joseph Heller who contributes an enduring phrase such as "Catch-22," there's an ad exec watching TV in an airport bar recalling when everyone wanted to know "Where's the beef?" To whichever category Jon Hein is ultimately consigned, the creator of Jump-the-Shark.com could be the first to have successfully coined a phrase via the Internet. Launched in late 1997, the site lets visitors vote for the moment they think a TV show — any TV show — started to go downhill, or "jumped the shark."
But in cyberspace, where nitpicking has been honed to a fine art, Jump the Shark seems to have transcended its original meaning. "Clarence Thomas jumped the shark watching pornography, and Ken Starr writing it," Maureen Dowd quipped in a recent New York Times column. She goes on to add that Hillary Clinton "transcends mere jumping. She is the shark."
Enthused Brian Lund, a writer and analyst for the financial site Motley Fool: "The great thing about 'jump the shark' is that you can apply it to almost anything."
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The Jump the Shark Web site lets visitors vote on the decline of favorite television shows. The phrase has since taken on a life of its own. |
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Search for new and unique products for your store:
www.shopbop.com
www.dailycandy.com
www.stylebakery.com
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Retailers we believe do this well:
Aunt Sadies, South End store in Boston www.auntsadiesonline.com (wholesale products)
Luna Boston www.lunaboston.com
Whole Foods www.wholefoods.com
Crate and Barrel www.crateandbarrel.com
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Referrals:
We always appreciate referral business. If you refer us to someone and they become a Retail Concepts client, we will provide you with a $50 gift card to a restaurant of your choice.
Visit us at www.retailconcepts.com
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