Is your store relevant?

Peter Smith says the answer is no if a store isn’t open enough, doesn’t respond to customers’ emails or voicemails, and doesn’t have merchandise that tells a cohesive story.

Michelle Graff michelle.graff@nationaljeweler.com

In a recent column, I wrote about the love/hate relationship retailers experience when they consider branding versus not branding their stores. My position was that while a case can be made for either a heavily brand-centric approach, or one that includes a combination of both known brands and your own private-label stories, what is less ambiguous is the absolute necessity of being relevant to your current and target customers.

Peter Smith currently is the president of Vibhor GemsThe $64,000 question, of course, is how do you make yourself relevant in the current retail landscape? We continue to see retailers extolling breadth of selection as though more irrelevant stuff really communicates anything of note.

We see retailers regularly championing their heritage as reason enough for young customers to frequent their stores. We also see other points of view, such as “being the cheapest option in town” or your pride at your remarkable custom-design possibilities being cited as reason for relevance.

We should all know by now that hand-held devices, and the access they provide to immediacy of information, have fundamentally altered the retail landscape forever. To paraphrase an ex-Boston Celtics coach who expressed the need to let go of the past and focus on the future, Woolworths, Circuit City and Montgomery Ward aren’t walking through that door. Nor, for that matter, are the approximately 20,000 retail jewelry doors that have disappeared in the last 30 years. They’re gone. They’re not coming back and, surprise, surprise, their customers have moved on and are doing just fine without them.

We’re not hearing of any sit-ins, there have been no demonstrations to protest the lost jobs or the fact that a given retailer is not there anymore. When a store closes its doors, the customer just goes someplace else to shop. They have always done that and they always will. No store, and I mean no store, is entitled to anyone’s business. It must be earned, and if you are handling the radically changing landscape by making half-hearted efforts at reinvention, while actually continuing to operate as you have always done, you just might be in more trouble than you realize.

I pulled up the website of a retailer last week and I couldn’t help but be drawn to their hours of operation. They are closed on Sunday, closed on Monday, and they close at 3 p.m. on Saturday. I

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previously wrote about an experience I had trying to get some watches fixed. I sent an e-mail through the website of a local retailer and never got a reply. I then called the retailer at 9 a.m. and, when no one answered the phone, I left a message indicating that I had some fine timepieces that needed servicing and I waited for a return call. It never came. Seriously?

What world are these retailers living in? I have no doubt that both of the aforementioned stores frequently bitch about why their respective businesses are in decline, and blame it on the “online discounters” and category-killers in their respective markets.

We are long past due a wake-up call when it comes to recognizing what consumers expect from retail businesses today, be it online, brick-and-mortar stores or omnichannel operations. I am not suggesting that brick-and-mortar stores need to be open 24/7, but the days of championing your great service and commitment to customers while building your store hours around a 1970s retail model is a disconnect that will put you out of business.

And putting contact information (phone numbers and e-mails) on your website and paying no attention to it thereafter is as good a way as any to permanently alienate current and perspective customers.

In their excellent book, The New Rules of Retail, Robin Lewis and Michael Dart wrote about icons Jeff Bezos of Amazon and the late Steve Jobs of Apple. They stated: “The most fundamental and visionary principle that Bezos and Jobs had in common was their relentless focus on satisfying consumers, which Bezos continues to do. No decision would be made or strategy implemented by either of these giants unless there was a discernible, and significant, benefit for the customer.”

Being closed for almost two-and-a-half days of the week doesn’t get it done. Ignoring your own website, e-mails and voicemails doesn’t get it done. That’s not serving the customer.

Perhaps and even bigger issue than fragmented service is the clarity and relevance of your product message to your customers. What is your message and your point of differentiation? The days of jewelers trying to be all things to all people are over.

The best retail models have a narrow range of viable product options and a clear point of differentiation. What’s more, the story is clearly and consistently communicated across all touch-points: advertising, marketing, public relations, website, social media, etc. Furthermore, your story ought to reflect in your brick-and-mortar store and through your people. There should be no lack of clarity in any of your touch-points--and all of them should reinforce the same message you are trying to get across to your customers and prospects.

It doesn’t seem like that long ago that people went to jewelry stores for products such as Lladró, Waterford Crystal and grandfather clocks. That same jeweler had walls of gold chain and he could also accommodate your birthstone, no matter what month it was, because … well, he just carried all that stuff.

To state the obvious, you are not required to carry all that stuff today. You get to select only those products and brands that align with your target and current customers and the guy down the street can have all the other “stuff.” The more stuff you have, the less jewelry the customer will see.

I read a piece in i3 magazine recently that hit home. Dan Pidgeon, the chairman of Starpower, a very successful home-entertainment systems company from Dallas, was interviewed and is quoted as saying, “We focus very hard on not overmerchandising our floors and creating the right environment to open up meaningful discussions about what consumers want and then making sure that we deliver on that promise.”

Make a decision about what message you want to communicate to your current and prospective customers. Then, hold that aspiration up against everything you are doing right now from a marketing and product standpoint.

In embracing a narrower (but deeper) product story, ask yourself what vendor-partners can help you to get where you need to go and make a commitment to them so that you are more important to each other.

There is a certain contradiction in that the more you condense and focus your message, and the fewer stories you try to tell, the easier you make it for your customer to understand what it is you do.

If your customer can’t easily define what you stand for, you don’t stand for anything.

Peter Smith, the author of Hiring Squirrels: 12 Essential Interview Questions to Uncover Great Retail Sales Talent, has spent more than 30 years building sales teams at retail and at wholesale. He is president of Vibhor Gems and he has previously worked with companies such as Tiffany & Co., Montblanc and Hearts On Fire. Email him at peter@vibhorgems.com, dublinsmith@yahoo.com or reach him on LinkedIn.