How can Retail slay Amazon?

As we go through another holiday season, we see another round of retail stores closing across the country. And what fascinates me about this problem is how “stuck” the retail leadership teams are in their old business model.

The Old Model of Business = One-Stop-Shop

For those who do not know, the reason retail stores were so successful was the concept of One-Stop-Shop. The previous world of product sales were craftsman — unique vendors providing only what they could make at their store - varying quality AND varying availability. Then came along the retail chains. One store to rule them all, one store to find them, one store to bring them all and in the darkness, bind them! The retail store became a place of sale for ALL items manufactured in high volume at low cost + distribution costs (note = distribution costs are much, much worse than people estimate — it is not just the cost of transportation, it is the cost of excess inventory and revision / rework / upgrade…more in another article). This was GREAT for the consumer, as now people had ACCESS to high quality, low cost products, right at the place where they lived — and best of all, immediately...well 10AM - 9PM or something of the sort.

Along came a spider…

With the advent of the web, came online shopping. One-Stop-Shop transitioned from physical to digital. Where can you go for one place to buy all the products you desire and have them sent directly to you in a timely manner? Walmart, the distribution genius…no, Amazon! Now people can, from the comfort of their couch after a Thanksgiving meal, order all their X-mas presents in one swoop, getting work done in a near instant. And Retail? Well, they are still trying to catch up. Those that are more successful have heavily invested in their online & data capabilities, making a shift to online shopping and closing stores where foot traffic does not warrant a physical presence. Retail is still trying to compete with the One-Stop-Shop model vs. the internet and there is no comparison. They are COMPLETELY missing the BOAT!!! Retail has been standing on the gold mine of a stone to slay the Goliath that is Amazon (hilarious that I joined Amazon in 2003 — at the time when they were the David with the stone of online sales…ask me about the 250lb, freight-shipped, palletized Weber 6-burner grill I bought with free shipping).

Customer Experience

Did anyone notice lately how Amazon has been OPENING storefronts all over the country? WHY!!!!!! Did anyone bother to ask that question? Well, let’s see what they have been using them for… 2-reasons:

1. Cheap Delivery - why deliver to a door @House, when you can send a truck to a central point and have your customer come pickup the item from a random bin assignment @Schedule?

2. Customer Service - why pickup a return @House, when you can enable the customer to easily return items @central location AND can provide all the resources for the return at a central point?

Did anyone notice how Amazon partnered recently with Kohls to accept Amazon returns at Kohls storefronts!!! Amazon is SCRAMBLING to setup storefronts for very specific reasons — logistical costs and customer experience. WHAT IF Retail stopped trying to compete on One-Stop-Shop and shifted their focus to Customer Experience? They already have Amazon by the ropes — providing a direct Human-to-Human, in-person interaction that is the ultimate Customer Experience local with the best delivery performance — RIGHT NOW!!! They could be providing service of EXPERT KNOWLEDGE in their specific field of products with human-to-human interaction that Amazon cannot possibly provide. It would involve completely overhauling their entire store model — facility size + product availability + layout of employees + communication methods + employee training + customer service — and they could be slinging the stone at Goliath, because people WANT HELP getting the perfect solution, at reasonable cost, customized exactly to them, and available NOW. (Note: Help NOT Being Sold, more in another article)

Amazon is a nightmare — do a search for a product and you get as much cheap, manufactured junk with bogus reviews from fly-by-night new business accounts as you do get what you want. Also Amazon is a DATA company — their user experience / user interface (UX/UI) is some of the worst of the web, dated back to early-2000 (you can tell their data-people run the show — why do you think Shopify has made so much ground as of late — much to UX/UI and ease-of-use for the business owner). Did you see the new Facebook? Kind of Instagram-ish isn’t it? Much more easy-to-use, giving up the old Facebook of horrid UX/UI. Customer Experience matters. A LOT!!! And in this new world of business, it is the company who understand the importance of being amazing: @cost, timeliness, and the entire customer experience that will win sales and establish loyalty.

Who do you want to be?

Chris

See…that is Simple. You have a partner in making the greatest organizations on the planet! The first contact begins a new leap for man & woman-kind.