This is a departure.  In this episode Stephen Semple shares trends that he is seeing that is being embraced by retailers.  Trends that are dangerously wrong. 

David Young:

Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from Mom and Pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well it's us. But we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients. So here's one of those.

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David Young:

Stephen, we're going to do a bit of a departure today. Tell me more.

Stephen Semple:

Instead of talking about some history of empires, we're going to talk a little bit more about strategy and some mistakes that are easy to make, because I think we're going to look back at this time, we're going to look back at retailers and we're going to see that this was a turning point and a lot of retailers really made a wrong call.

David Young:

So we may be witnessing the decline and fall of the retail empire.

Stephen Semple:

I think we are. I think we are in a lot of cases. Because here's what I've been seeing. I've been talking to a lot of retailers and I've also been witnessing this, ad you'll see this when you go to a retailing store today. There's four things that they're doing. One is they're cutting their hours. Look at the hours that malls have. They've cut evenings. They're not open as much as in the weekends. You go to your local store, they've cut hours. They've also cut staff. We know that, look, we can look that up in employment stats. Retailing is down unemployment. They've cut staff. If you go to a store today, they've cut inventory. They're not carrying as much inventory. And while we also know from talking to our media buyers, because they're in contact constantly with the media companies, is they've cut advertising. So they've cut hours, cut staff, cut inventory, cut advertising.

Stephen Semple:

And I've been talking to them about how this is a bad idea. They're going, "No, Steve, you don't understand. It's hardly impacted my sales. It's fine." But here's my thing, let's stop and think about this. What they've done is cut hours, cut staff, cut inventory. So what they've done is they've made themselves less convenient, less helpful, less selection, and by cutting advertising, less known. Oh yeah, there's a recipe for success. Meanwhile, let's look online. Completely convenient, unlimited selection. What we're seeing is online retailers are continually working on their website presence to make the shopping experience better. And in terms of well-known 80%, 80, 8,0 percent of US households have an Amazon Prime account that they pay for every month.

David Young:

Right. That doesn't get you have one product.

Stephen Semple:

It doesn't get you one product. Gets you the right to buy one without shipping costs. This is like standing in front of a firing squad and saying, "Can you please hand me a cigarette?" What they're saying is they're going, "Yeah, but Steve, you don't understand. It hasn't impacted my sales because the people who come in have bought." Here's my question. Are they coming back?

David Young:

Well, it it's almost like they're saying, "It's not affecting my sales because I'm already dead. I just haven't realized it yet."

Stephen Semple:

Right. But since when is a strategy of, "I'm going to be less helpful, less convenient, less known." Since when, of all the companies that we looked at, has there been a single one where that is a strategy that has worked? All of them have done something to make themselves more convenient, better time, better all of it. So you know what, retailers? Wake up, smell the coffee. Don't get in front of that firing squad. Do something different.