Blog: Wait for the good times or take on the velociraptors: what’s your strategy?

OK the economy is coming right… but the real problem is the pack of velociraptors in your back garden. If you don’t fix them…forget the economy!

As the country slowly limps out of recession, we find ourselves in a very different retail landscape. The downturn obviously had an effect on the high street, but were the casualties really just victims of a credit-dependent business model, and an economy pumped to bursting point? Maybe. Maybe not.

For nearly a decade, “The Economy” has been paraded as the reason for the retail sector’s woes. But the new reality we’re all adjusting to has been shaped much more by the pervasive, here to stay, and I would argue massively more dramatic influence of the e-retailers who have spent the last fifteen years or more sharpening their e-commerce teeth – becoming a devastating weapon in the jaws of what is now a savage pack of predators…

I suggest this is really what is causing the challenges today and this is far more dangerous than an economic cycle.

The seismic change that they’ve learned to ride on has been driven by the massive social trends we’re all very well aware of. The way people and businesses interact is different now – social media has mushroomed, e-commerce is the norm, everyone has a mobile and wi-fi is the invisible link, and it’s going everywhere.

In this e-xx world the e-tailers are thriving by offering instant access to endless aisles, one-click buying, peer reviews, smart suggestions, no queuing, no parking hassles, low prices and home delivery so fast it’s almost instant gratification. It’s easy and time efficient.

Amazon is setting the benchmark here. It’s a genuine marketplace where browsing and buying is made easy.

For retailers with a more traditional set-up, that’s the real challenge, and it needs to be urgently addressed. With a voracious predator muscling in on your hunting ground, economic growth will not necessarily save you… so how do you respond?

First you need to adapt to your new environment. That means tapping into the expectations and demands of the e-xx world and making better use of the resources you have; take what people like about Amazon and incorporate into your own business model, while playing up the differences to your advantage. You have two weapons:

1. Omnichannel

We‘ve all been working on this. There are some startlingly good examples (as one demonstration of this working) of retailers getting store stock as part of e-commerce orders for same day delivery… Boom! One raptor down.

The learning here is that, although e-commerce looks like it all, suddenly the store has a role again… and e-tailers don’t have any!

2. The Store

It’s time to really leverage the store, from a stock point for e-commerce into something far more powerful. The store has two massive advantages:

• an emotional buying experience that allows touch/see/feel. This builds a connection with the customer
• staff – the customers’ hosts – helping, guiding, offering alternatives, adding a warm layer of human interaction to the experience… we’re all suckers for a good salesperson especially, as I’ve learnt, if you are one. People buy from people.

The key is to make it easy.

Bring the easy, visual, virtual world together with the exciting, tactile, almost visceral world of interacting with a product and a service wrap with human warmth, and value starts.

Make your store people a dramatic part of the virtual, visceral experience… provide them with the e-xx world and shape it around the customer and you may be able to fend off the rest of those blighters in your back yard…

The time is now. You urgently need to unleash your stores… if not, the economy may not save you. Now, where’s that copy of Jurassic Park?