The Retailer of the Future will likely be a Retailer of the Past — just the most efficient version therein.

by Sid Raisch

As you know, there is a lot of noise in the media these days. It’s nothing new really. There’s always been a lot of noise. But it is noisier when it directly affects you. I’m talking about business noise, I mean news, in this instance.

There is a considerable amount of business news about happenings with retail chains, possibly because it is the most visible business segment, and at the top of the supply chain of other segments such as manufacturing of the things sold at retail.

And there is the news that sometimes says, “you don’t need to pay attention to the news”, which can be a particularly dangerous kind. This news is a threat if you listen to it and believe it is right without thinking more deeply. It is a threat if you listen to it and begin to that the decisions you have made were wrong and not necessary.

As an example, here’s the headline of an article published on CNBC last week:

“Retail's not dead, and physical stores still matter, Goldman says”

It isn’t like the headline isn’t true, but it is terribly misleading when you compare it to the body of the article, especially other quotes from Goldman Sachs. And it piggybacks on the authority of a respected authority like Goldman.

Because so many people get the news by headlines and soundbites, media has a nasty habit of using headlines and soundbites to lead the reader down the wrong path of thinking.

Let’s look into the body of the article and see what else it says, and think about what we would think if one of the other quotes had been chosen instead for the headline:

“U.S. retail sector is overstored and out of step in an era of e-commerce”,
This was actually the first part of a complete sentence which was turned into the headline that was extracted from the rest of it.

Then the article tells us this;
"The retailer of the future will likely be a retailer of the past — just the most efficient version therein."
This sentence would have been the most accurate headline, in my opinion. And the message is this; become the retailer of the future by becoming the most efficient version of you that you can become.

Rest assured, retail is alive and well - in a combined sense of brick & mortar and ecommerce. There has not been a slowdown in online retail or combined brick & mortar / ecommerce (Omnichannel) retail in the big picture. I won’t speculate why Amazon felt it needed the street presence of Whole Foods.

Did you hear that Aldi’s, is beginning home delivery from its stores of online purchases? The Aldi’s announcement seems to me to be a clear sign of the times. They are adding 750 new store locations for a total of 3,500, while beginning home delivery by Instacart, (the home delivery company that Whole Foods funded) from those 3,500 highly efficient storefronts. I think Aldi’s may be surrounding Walmart stores for the kill. Smaller, faster to shop, more efficient, and cheaper. And also satisfying the rising American dislike for going out for shopping, especially for things that can be rather easily delivered to the door.

This retail thing isn’t going to end well, for retailers that find themselves on the wrong side of consumer interest. If you are to become a retailer of the future as well as of the past, I believe that you’ll be highly efficient and will offer ecommerce convenience, no matter what other value you provide your consumer - and I’d be figuring out how to accomplish home delivery and installation in a bigger scale to go with it.

If you’re about to blow this whole thing off thinking home delivery won’t be a consumer expected factor, consider this, Target is also getting into home delivery as you’ll read HERE.

Your friend,
Sid

Sid is a consulting Service Provider to The Garden Center Group and also serves as President/CEO of Bower & Branch. He is a board member of AmericanHort and Come Alive Outside. Sid has been inventing and reinventing the way things “don’t get done” into “get it done” strategies that increase profit-ability, market-ability, oper-ability, and owner-ability of garden centers, landscape operations and a few wise suppliers of plants and products. It’s not 38 years of the same thing, it’s thirty-eight increasingly effective years dedicated to improving and re-inventing the inter-dependent horticulture supply chain. He’s constantly challenging “that’s how we do it”, “we tried that”, and a dozen or so other excuses. Sid knows how to get people to get things done by overcoming underlying attitudes, fears and lacking resources. When you read Sid’s articles or hear Sid talk “put your ears on” and listen up, and get ready to think and implement changes that will take you and your company to new heights and new places. Contact Sid at 937-302-0423 or email to [email protected]