Web Strategy

Monday, October 19th, 2009

You can’t reason your way out of this

left-brain-right-brain

Ah, the good old days! Fact is, the furniture industry was successful in the 1950’s and the 1970’s and 1990’s. But “nothing fails like success,” says Gerald Nachman, cultural historian and founder of www.thecolumnist.com. Financial success turned our industry into a left-brain culture. Left-brain cultures are good at preserving old paradigms and programs, what Harvard Business Professor Clayton Christensen calls “sustaining technology.”

This works well when an industry is hitting on all cylinders. But when they slump, as is happening in furniture right now, left-brain cultures fail. In this industry’s case, we have tried to innovate by building lines that look exactly the same only cheaper because we believe the customer is only interested in price. Marketing departments scream louder and louder about unsustainable credit offers, and now we are trying to make cheap computers and bad bicycle give-a-ways the reason Ms. Jones should visit our stores. Leaders won’t implement technology, claiming the customer will not be interested in fully using it, and the result is bland brands and slow growth or dying retailers.

In his 2005 bestseller, A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink says, “The future belongs to designers, inventors, teachers, storytellers—creative and empathetic right-brain thinkers” who exhibit “the capacity to detect patterns and opportunities, to create artistic and emotional beauty, to craft a satisfying narrative.” In every industry there must be right-brain thinkers. They’ll need promoted and will play a part in upending existing paradigms.

The cold reality is that left-brain cultures are a liability when it comes to innovation. These cultures are not bad—they’re simply not equipped to move forward. Left-brain cultures rearrange existing programs; they rarely allow systemic change. They claim today’s situations is really the same as it ever was.

3+2-5 is not an innovative way of saying 5-3-2. The sum remains the same: zero.

Posted in About Retail, Communication, Family Business, Generations, Web Strategy | Leave Comment

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009

Buy Me Some Peanuts and Crackerjacks

baseball In this morning’s New York Times I was struck by recent purchase of the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Field by the Ricketts family from TD Ameritrade fame.

This reminded me of furniture store stories for several reasons. The Cubs haven’t won a World Series for 101 years, Wrigley Field is the second oldest ball park in MLB and the Ricketts family made all of their wealth changing the rules of the stock trading industry. This same juxtaposition is taking place right in front of us in our industry daily.

Opportunity abounds. Our 100 year plus casegoods and textile businesses are dying painfully. New ideas for design, distribution, pricing, etc. are presenting themselves daily. At the same time, the hanger-on-ers continue to hang-on. Old thinking is sucking the life from many.

The Cubs and Wrigley were both owned by the same company, The Tribune Co., which is operating under bankruptcy protection. So is the Los Angeles Times and several other recognizable newspapers. Furniture stores continue to typically spend over one-third of their marketing budgets using this failing delivery vehicle.

Paid content news providers are growing by more than 25% annually. Aggregation websites such as Fark, Boing-Boing, ebaumsworld, CollegeHumor and Digg, and the sheer filtering efficiency of social networks do a pretty good job of separating the wheat from the chaff. Online search is now part of nearly every furniture purchase cycle, reportedly reaching 95% during the last twelve months.

So, who will be the Ricketts family who changes the furniture landscape in the coming years? It will be the folks who laugh out loud when they read quotes like this one by Elbert Hubbard, “Parties who want milk should not seat themselves on a stool in the middle of the field in hope that the cow will back up to them.”

Bob Garfield, Robert Picard, and Greg Stielstra are all making the case that we have entered the post-advertising age. How are you allowing your customer to engage with your company? How are you answering her concerns on her terms? What have you provided as a communications platform to allow her to tell you how you are doing?

At The Lively Merchant we are focused on the future. We won’t waste you money on pie-in-the-sky wild ideas. More importantly we won’t waste you money on nearly worthless newspapers just because it is the way it’s always been done.

I haven’t passed a horse and buggy on the highway recently. Have you?

Posted in About Retail, Communication, Family Business, Web Strategy | 1 Comment

Monday, October 5th, 2009

Do you believe me?

Recently I’ve had the pleasure of spending a lot of time with several retailers in a round table setting. We talk at ease about television and radio and newspaper, but I often get blank stares when I bring up the subject of online strategy, ecommerce, SEO, PPC, email marketing and other non-traditional media.

Many store owners tell me they still spend the majority of their advertising dollars on newspaper and other print media. In a recent industry-wide report, stores categorized as LOW PROFIT businesses continue to spend 34.3% of their marketing in print. These same companies are spending under .05% on all things web!?

Retooling is coming to a newspaper near you in the near future. The newspaper industry is in a free fall in every measurable category: 24 of the top 25 papers in North America declined in circulation in the last 15 months. The average decline in circulation is 20%. Advertising spending has dropped 7.5% overall, but the first quarter of 2009 saw a decline of 28.3% in advertising spending. There is a plunging reduction of $2.6 billion from just a year earlier. Scripps, Gannet, McClatchy, and the New York Times have all watched their stock price go to zero in 2009.They are bankrupt!

The Chaos Scenario by Bob Garfield In the new book, The Chaos Scenario, Bob Garfield writes in Chapter 1, page 33; “Both print and broadcast — burdened with unwieldy, archaic and crushingly expensive means of distribution — are experiencing the disintegration of the audience critical mass they require to operate profitably. Moreover, they are losing that audience to the infinitely fragmented digital media, which have near-zero distribution costs and are overwhelmingly free of charge to the user. Free is a tough price to compete with. As documented by Woodward and Bernstein, Deep Throat’s advice to unraveling Watergate was to ‘Follow the money.’ To understand the current predicament, you must follow the no-money.”

Safeguarded opinion established in days gone by can cause you real problems in the days ahead. Ask yourself these questions from Garfield’s Chaos group:

Consider your own habits. Do you read newspapers as frequently as you once did, or do you get your news online?
Discuss the impact of Craigslist, Monster.com, and eHarmony on newspaper classified advertising.
If newspaper and magazine display advertising disappear, what alternatives will connect that audience to your brand?
If media institutions as large as the Tribune Company (Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times) are in bankruptcy, is any mass media outlet safe?
How has the Internet changed the availability of content?
How did you get your news ten years ago? How do you get it today?
How much time do you spend connecting with your friends vs. consuming media? How has that ratio changed in the last ten years?
If you could no longer buy advertising on mass media, how would you connect with your customers?
Can you name any businesses that succeeded in stopping cultural shifts?
Can you name any businesses that successfully adapted to cultural shifts?
Is your company organized/equipped to effectively listen to its customers? What should you change or implement in order to hear them?
What are your customers trying to tell you? What are you doing about it?

Empowered business owners get to decide what they believe. Documented changes in business should not be avoided. Entrenched thinking might be more comfortable than the alternative, but without a planned strategy your future is bleak. When the newspapers themselves fail in your marketplace, how will you deliver you story?

Posted in About Retail, Communication, Web Strategy | Leave Comment

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

Does your shopping cart scare your customer away?

Your customer is most anxious on your website when she’s reviewing her cart. The cart page shows the cart total for the items added and the basic price – but often doesn’t show the tax or shipping charges – thus begins the fear of the unknown.

Aside from price, the customer wants assurance that she’s getting what she wanted. For furniture, this is usually size and color, material, or wood finish at the very least.

Bad cart summary pages don’t provide enough detail:

bad cart

The customer is interested in a lot more information about the product.

Do not be vague. Without a thumbnail image it’s near impossible to figure out what type of bed and which finish she is going to receive if she makes the purchase.

Excellent cart pages show the sku, color, large thumbnail images, availability, tax and include a shipping calculator pre-checkout.

good cart 2