Michael1942's Blog

After spending many years in retail as an  equipment salesman, equipment cleaner, and rental agent for photographic equipment. Continuing on as a flooring and wall covering salesman and installer, I have found that managers who have not had the basic frontline experience in retail cannot properly manage a retail operation.  The things that make a retail operation successful are customer service (no service ,no customers), having the product in stock and proper pricing. The ancillary items are a clean store (especially bathrooms). The  important thing then is customer service which involves all of the above along with a friendly face to assist in the purchase if needed.  Apparently many companies have forgotten this concept and have lost market share. A couple of examples are     HD and SHC which both were and are being managed by  people whose retail knowledge is limited to maybe their making a purchase somewhere but not recognizing the process of the sale at the time. The mantra seems to be : “you are a manager and have ultimate responsibility for success”. This does account for the support people who have no hands on retail experience  yet are responsible for store setup and product line up on the shelves. With the computer age arrived the desk bound retailers who design layouts and shelf spacing without ever having worked in a store. This leads to continual changes in the set up and shelf spacing aside from the normal seasonal changes. This is disruptive to the workers and the customers, the workers spend more than average amounts of time moving merchandise around instead of maintaining stock levels on the shelves. The customers spend more time seeking  a product they purchased before and cannot readily find it since the area was reset. At this point some leave the store without making a purchase or seeking assistance. That is dollars on the hoof going somewhere else perhaps never to return.