by Pat Darnell*
Tough love; ever heard that oxymoron? Take a hard, tough, objective look at your own stores' space as if you are the person wanting repeat business appeal standards. What pulls you, and, the bald man back into your establishment to buy shampoo... huh?
It is not, for sure, a Grouse standing at your business-end, money machines, looking like an infantry soldier in Iraq -- wishing only to get home.
Nor is repeat, value add-able, customers interested in your pharmacist -- who, though highly intelligent enough to keep you all out of malpractice courts -- is but a Goober when it comes to handling customers.... name calling you clinchingly quiver at me... Shut Up: grow a pair, all of you genderless PC oxymoronic budgies. This is not about taking the smoke out of smoking.
Repeat Appeal -- It is 83.9933% [plus\minus 2.3399%] your counter Gurl, and the other percentages really do not matter. Your store looks just like the Ben Franklin, Long John Silvers and Mega Wash Detailers and Outfitters Drive-thru ... and so on, etcetra etcetra ... I'm going out like Elsie -- not unlike Liza's veritable sameness. Sure clean and dust proof, dry Dry Goods, 'ample parking, is all important. But COME ON !! it is the least on a list. Moreover, these figures are posted and based on absolutely no scientific data.
You might set up your store's front egress like a Tavern's Bar. Even provide toe kick with a Captain Morgan foot rail, antique brass spittoon, and genuine clank of thick glass containers. MAKE THE COUNTER OUT OF REAL WOOD PLANK.
Want a GUARANTEE? Okay-- "I guarantee it ain't fancy Muzak, impulse shelving and vendor provided slip and slides... " it's background NOISE.
Why? If you have to ask, you need more business, and the male shopper has been forgotten... or have you noticed? JCPenney got rid of its AUTO and TOOLS Departments way back in 1980's ... that does not make any sense.
Why the Pharmacy counter? That is the furthest point from your front doors, and target customers' number one: "Balding, Heart Broke, man who keeps going to his Doctors for only one reason..." -- to walk all the way to the back of YOUR store to be told: "... that will be twenty minutes Sir."
BINGO ... I have your number. We could set up a coffee center, and a "fulla" Doll impulse stand. And you all thought stores were random dens of unbearable clutter. Vote for stiffer tariffs on China Imports to USA.
MooPig's Retail Tales Department, has once again spoke on its readers' behalf: all seven of them.
NEXT WEEK :: "There has to be BEAST behind every Beauty..."
*Pat Darnell is a very humble, retired from engineering, person, who with 30 years of beast-ful knowledge in retail layout and design says: "I will accept franchise and sole-proprietor store owners', anyone's, challenge for me to walk in, and in 90 days increase your ledgers' blackness by 33%, both ledgers that is, by improving repeat business. I have done it before, and can do it for anyone, except maybe pizza businesses."
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