Specialty Retail Blog

It is with much sadness that we say good-bye to our affiliate Ed Cloeter (Michigan). Ed loved consulting and his clients loved him. His sharp wit and salty sense of humor endeared him to those who were lucky to have known him. He will be sorely missed.

On Tuesday, April 22, Evan Wise will make a presentation to over 100 vendors and retailers in the skate industry. The presentation is part of the IASC meeting in Orange CA at the Doubletree.  The presentation is about merchandising and innovation. Innovation is an important skill for any industry, vendor or retailer to increase market share, loyalty and viability for the long term.  Merchandising, the planning needed to have the right merchandise in the right amount at the right time in the right place at the right price , is critical to success.  Bringing innovation and merchandising together will be the challenge of the day.

Celebrate! This year marks the tenth anniversary since our web enabled merchandise planning process has been available to independent retailers. This is a huge advantage since the flow of information from the retailer and to the retailer happens at light speed. In a retail world where things happen quickly, sending data and getting plans needs to be fast, accurate and easy!! We have been web and internet enabled longer than any other merchandise planning organization for independent retailers. We are proud to be at the cutting edge of retail planning. We are now working on GEN 2 to provide more benefits to our retail clients.

Evan Wise
Managing Director

At Management One® we are, and have been, in a growth mode. That means that we are challenged to find new affiliates in many areas. The process consists of doing everything possible to find people with a familiarity with retail business and a desire to establish and develop a career in retail consulting.

Seems like the opportunity to develop your own business at virtually no cost would be attractive. The fact that our affiliates can easily have 10 to 30 clients means that job security is not an issue. The flexibility to arrange your schedule within the limits of your client’s needs can be attractive. Working most of the clients in the first 3 weeks of the month means that once a client base is established, it can be maintained by referrals and an affiliate can take a week off for vacation every month if desired.

Working with Management One means that an affiliate gets continuous training to constantly improve skills and knowledge. A flow of marketing ideas and events concepts are available every week to bring new fresh ideas to clients. Trends and hot lines are shared monthly. Management One not only provides the training one needs to be a great consultant, a mentor is assigned to be sure the new affiliate is successful through the entire time they are with Management One.

The frustration of unemployment comes in finding enough retailers that want to expand to help other retailers succeed. One would think that with 9% unemployment, there are a pool of talented people with retail experience that are interested in establishing a whole new career. Too many of the unemployed seem to feel they will wait for things to get back the way they were. The sad fact is for most, it never will.

We are looking for people that are excited about finding a new career. Call us if you know any.

By Evan Wise

I was reading an article on soft power (by Joseph Nye Jr, former dean of the Harvard Kennedy School) as it applies to foreign affairs and I found it very interesting and applicable to our business environment. Power is defined as the ability to influence the outcome to be what you desire. The article compared the effectiveness of using hard power (military force and economic enticements) and soft power (the ability to use strategy, leadership and vision) to achieve the goals of our country.

Soft power appeals to the intangible assets of culture, values and policies that are seen as legitimate and having moral authority to get people to desire the outcome. These tend to be more important in achieving objectives than using force in the way of military or economic sanctions or inducements to require the outcome. Soft power is taking advantage of the information revolution happening around the world. Even thought the article was written in 2004, we are seeing Facebook and the internet applying power in the middle east in countries like Egypt, Tunisia, Libya etc. Knowledge and information are power and communication is the tool that applies that power toward a desired outcome.

There is a lot more to the article but you get the gist. Our military efforts have been costly and marginally effective while our use of soft power has also been marginally effective at a lower cost. So why bring this up here, in a retail blog?

As I read the article I thought about Management One. Rather than run our business on the basis of hard power where affiliates are employees and wages, promotions and directives are the hard power that is used to get the ends the company desires, we rely on soft power. Every affiliate is independent and is linked by strategy, values and culture. Information is the power that binds the team. It has worked as the best method to achieve results for Management One and our clients for the past 21 years.

But there is an insight for retailers too. Too often they use hard power to achieve ends with customer s and employees. Discounts, sales, and economic enticements are the application of retail hard power. Relationship development is the application of soft power to build your business. Just like our diplomatic efforts, the results can be as good but at a lower cost. Choosing the right merchandise and providing the right shopping environment is also soft retail power to get customers to desire to come in and buy.

Nye has a quote that defines why so many retailers turn to Management One affiliates for help. He addresses the abundance of information available to retailers to make decisions. There is too much information available. He says, “When people are overwhelmed with the volume of information confronting them, it is hard to know what to focus on. Attention rather than information becomes the scarce resource, and those who can distinguish valuable information from background clutter gain power.“ That is part of the power a Management One affiliate brings.

I hope this alternative view of retail in terms of international diplomacy helps you think about your business in a different way. The better you are at using soft power effectively with customers and employees, the more real and lasting your results will be.

Evan Wise gave the keynote address for the 40 clients that travelled to Canton Ohio for 2 days of learning about the SRS POS system and how it interfaces with Management One® and the Winning@Retail process.  Attendees heard Marc Weiss talk about cash flow planning and the break even analysis while John Adams and Dennis Levine presented a great session on how to use the reports from the SRS system to  turn the OTB budget into an assortment plan and a successful buy.  Dennis shared his historical analysis with the group saying, “ in my 20 years with Management One I measured the accuracy of the sales forecasts every 6 months. I found that they were 92.5% accurate 3 months out, 87% accurate 6 months out and 82% accurate 9 months out!”  All attendees agreed it was a valuable and informative session. Thanks to Tim Smyth for inviting us and having the confidence in Management One to participate in the meeting.

ARS has developed an upload file  that can easily feed the  Management One® Winning@Retail process.  This is a step forward for ARS users to be able to get more value from their numbers and more profits and cash from their business.  The upload allows users to load update files at any time and the Management One® Plan-On-Demand process will update  sales, receiving, inventory and OTB information  for up to the minute decision making!

As the NFL playoffs get underway, I am again reminded that my Cleveland Browns will not be a part of the show. “Wait till next year” has become a common refrain in Cleveland sports. Cleveland teams adopt that strategy of hope rather than find the top talent and attempt to keep that talent in Cleveland.

Cleveland sports are a great example of how, with a strategy of hope, you can survive a long time without ever winning. What is your strategy for 2011? Are you going to buy better and learn to negotiate harder? Are you going to get rid of non-productive staff and hire more effectively? Are you going to train the staff to learn new techniques? Are you going to find new lines and unique products?

Do not forget about cash flow planning to keep more of the sales dollars that come into the business. Do not ignore your merchandise planning to make sure your investment  in merchandise is balanced properly to meet the demand. New marketing can bring in new customers – but only a top-notch shopping experience will bring them back to the store.

How many retailers are trapped by the same strategy of hope as the Cleveland Browns? Rather than finding the top retail talent and challenging, motivating and rewarding those talented people to keep them working in the store, some retailers adopt a dangerously simple strategy of hope for the future.

2011 looks to be a great year for retail in general. Make sure your plans make it a great year for you in specific! As for the Browns, we will need to wait till next year…

Every rental car company rents the same or at least similar cars, yet Enterprise emerged from the pack to lead the industry. Starbucks rose from primarily selling a commodity, coffee, to establish a business that grew to unprecedented size. Southwest Airlines listened to customers and grew to the industry leader in air travel. The list could continue. These companies found the ways to be different and better.

What does this mean to you? Walk into your top 3 competitors’ stores, but instead of looking at the lines and prices, look at the service. List 5 main ways you are not only different but better in the eyes of your customers. Then ask your customers if they agree. In 2011 find 2 new ways to be different and better.

Many progressive companies, including Management One®, are taking surveys of those who are benefitting from their goods or services so as to gauge the satisfaction with what is offered. The results are sometimes surprising. Sometimes you get no feedback and that is a message too! At times where you believe you excel is not important to customers, while sometimes what you do naturally is very important to them. The key is you need to know what they are thinking – then respond!

Retail can be a very tough business. There are lots of pressures, lots of things to do, problems to solve, customers to help, employees to coach, vendors to negotiate with, and that’s just before lunch on Monday!

All of us who are part of Retail Smart Guys provide open to buy planning, sure. But we also find that we have to help in other areas of the business, too. As retail consultants who are in retail stores every day of our lives, we see the good, the bad, and the ugly in this business. We see what works and what doesn’t. We admire those who take the time to build out beautiful stores, who really establish solid connections with their customers, who understand how to make their inventory presentations exciting and fun. I suppose this is true of many retail consultants around the world.

But one of the things that we’ve noticed recently, is that we provide one other thing that is perhaps one of our greatest values. It’s that our customers can talk to us about their business, freely and openly, and get the help they need. Let me clarify this a bit;

Many retailers certainly seek out advice from a number of sources, and most commonly from vendors. Vendors certainly have a great view of the marketplace, and they too see a lot of what goes on in the retail space. But in the end, the vendor’s solution to a retailer’s problems will be to buy their product. It’s a little like that old saying, “To a carpenter, everything is solved with a hammer.”

For us as consultants, the only thing we honestly care about is whether or not that retailer has made money, and if they are happy doing so. In terms of product or vendor solution, we don’t “have a dog in the fight” (a new saying for me – but it basically means that it doesn’t matter to us which vendor the retailer buys, as long as it contributes positively to the store and makes the retailer money.)

The same can be said for nearly anything else in the store – marketing, employee relations, technology, finance. We know a lot about each of these areas, so retailers can freely talk to us about it. And, just as I wrote above, we don’t have a dog in the fight – we just want the retailer to do better, to win at the game of retail, and (dare I say it) have fun at the same time.

You could say that there are others that the retailer could talk to – spouses, friends, etc., and that is probably true. However, unless these people are also in the retail business, they may not be as good a source of counseling and information as an impartial person who is deeply connected to the marketplace as we are.

That’s what makes consultants an important part of the mix for most retailers. Someone they can REALLY talk to. And to be honest, that’s what makes me the most proud of what we do. We help people, who just happen to be retailers, become more successful.

Talk to us. We’d love to hear from you. I even put my cell phone number below so you can reach me anytime.

Dan Jablons
Retail Smart Guys

818 720 2585