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Tried and true, or tired and through

February 11, 2011 by Doug Fleener — President and Managing Partner, Dynamic Experiences Group, LLC

I was talking with a retailer Monday who discussed with me all of the changes and decisions she needs to make concerning her stores, including investing in new fixtures, new brands, expanding her lines, and her staff.

Are you thinking that this retailer's business must be down? Far from it, she's coming off a record year. Even so, here she is talking about all the changes she needs to make to keep her store fresh and relevant to her customers.

This is one of the differences I see between extraordinary retailers and average ones. Extraordinary retailers are driven to keep improving and upgrading their physical store and product lines regardless of their sales success. Then again, this approach is what makes them more successful.

Success is often a business's worst enemy. Year after year a successful company keeps doing the tried and true, but fails to realize that they're slowly slipping down to tired and through.

Here are some things to consider to improving on the tried and true before it becomes tired and through:

1. Are your top products and brands still relevant to your customers? This may sound pretty basic, but there were a lot of typewriter repair shops that lost a lot of money trying to hang on. Remember, it's always easier to adjust your products and brands for your customers than it is to find new customers for your products and brands.

2. Do you invest in new ways to display your key brands? None of us like to spend money on walls and fixtures, but if a product line is key to our success then we can't afford to let its importance being overshadowed by worn or dated fixtures surrounding it.

New products on old and tired fixtures are like putting a mini-skirt on grandma. (Sorry, I guess I'm still freaked out by Joan Rivers as the new GoDaddy girl.) The point is that you have to invest in new fixtures from time to time or you'll pay a much higher price down the road.

3. Are you testing and bringing in new categories and lines to evolve your tried and true? As a business matures it does risk becoming, dare I say, boring? Some stores bring in the same product year after year with just slight iterations, and then owners/managers can't figure out why sales are stalled and traffic is dropping. Always be thinking about what else you can sell to your current customer base. There's usually more opportunity around us than we realize. We just need to create it.

4. Do you update your store before it needs it? I was recently in a jewelry store whose carpet was so worn it was an embarrassment. I'm sure that over the last couple of years the company management has felt they couldn't afford to replace it in such a difficult retail environment. I say they can't afford not to change it. If you've been thinking for a while now that you need to repaint, replace, or update something in your store, chances are you should have already done it.

5. Do you keep growing and developing your staff so they don't drift from tried and true to tired and through? Complacency is a business killer that causes missed sales and lost customers. Tried and true employees are good, but a challenged and growing tried and true team will always outperform the competition.

So let me ask, are you always improving your tried and true?

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