Croud Sourcing - is this the end for Wal-Mart's buyers?

Wal-Mart, one of the biggest companies on the planet, is testing the ultimate form of Crowd Sourcing - customer's choosing what new and interesting products will be stocked in their stores. Could this be the end of the retail buyer as we know it? ...I doubt it, but providing the appropriate safeguards are put in place, it's certainly a wonderful example of the ultimate form 'pull' merchandising. And certainly a refreshing merchandising initiative from a monolith so often constipated with intimidating and aggressive 'buying' bureaucracy. Wal-Mart has invited merchandise applications from the 'world at large' to be stocked in their stores, with success dependant on voting from the stores' customers on their website. Please read this wonderful article in the FT which answers all the questions anyone may have.

With the world and customers demanding evermore customisation and personalisation this has to be a massive step in the right direction for this enormous and rather un-wielding business - but get it right and the rewards will be mind boggling!

Wake up and smell the coffee - 'Be disloyal'

Disloyalty rewarded - now there's a thought for independent retailers taking on the big chains! Robert Stockdill, a buddy of mine and a font of retail knowledge in Asia recently blogged about an interesting initiative in Singapore. Well worth clicking through to Inside Retail - Asia to check out how the independent coffee shops are fighting back in the war for regular customers...Robert is now based in the heart of Asia and I'd counsel you to follow his retail/business blog if you're interested in what's really going on in this phenomenally important region.

Retailing at its best - product to die for!

Wonderfully redolent setting for a romantic story 

Great retailing is about great story telling and with impeccable timing, French perfume house Lubin launched Black Jade on Bastille Day 2011 - it's a fragrance that was created exclusively for Marie Antoinette and she is believed to have kept a small vial of the fragrance with her at all times, even right up to her death at the guillotine. Indeed, Luca Turin writes in The Secret of Scent, that it was the Queen's unmistakable perfume that gave her away as she fled the palace during the French Revolution.

Evocative scene setting

I read about the launch of Black Jade when I was lecturing in NYC and made a special journeying to Aedes De Venustas on Christopher Street in the heart of Greenwich Village to buy the fragrance as a special gift for my wife. It took me nearly 2 hours to find this wonderful little boutique in torrential rain but this incredibly romantic fragrance (a blend of bergamot, cardamom, rose, jasmine, incense, cinnamon, sandalwood, patchouli, vanilla, tonka bean and amber) was extremely well received, especially when I recounted the history - a great gift and great story.

It's such a shame more retailers don't go out of their way to tell genuinely interesting stories as 'signature' call signs to entice customers to choose them, travel to them, giving customers a reason to genuinely feel differently about the specialness of the store and what they've just bought. With some determined research, there's always something that can be told about key products that makes everyone feel special - including the sales person.

Please read more about Black Jade on Perfume Shrine Blog and Aedes De Venustas website.

Delighting customers is old news but astounding them isn't!

Just wander around your local high street or shopping mall with your eyes wide open and experience the broken business models most retailers still faithfully reproduce - to be honest it doesn't take long to realise why customers feel soooooo uninspired.....and now really open your eyes and click here to be transported into customer inspiration-heaven. Look at the initiative Lynx undertook to wake up, be noticed and build their brand in the eyes of their London audience - I love it, and more importantly so did their customers.

In order 'to be chosen' by your audiences, let your mind run free - be different not just better than the competition.....customers will love you for it!

In UK supermarket price wars - has truth become the first casualty?

    WOW....I can hardly believe what I saw on TV last night.

According to Panorama, an investigative programme from the BBC, all the UK's big 4 supermarkets are allegedly misleading their customers with pricing deals that don't add-up. From palpably incorrect signage promising 'Bigger packs - better value' to accusations of cynically raising prices to then reduce them in a blaze of publicity, supermarkets appear to be misleading their time-pressed customers during busy shopping expeditions - see this clip. Sophie Raworth one of the stars of BBC News TV and journalist on the Panorama programme admitted the maths were too difficult and on this clip said she needed a calculator .... conceding she couldn't do the necessary calculations when distracted by her 3 children out shopping.

Mistakes or misleading - this is not what customers expect from their trusted retailers. Especially when these supermarkets talk about being on the customers' side! The tactics highlighted by Panorama are the sort of tactics so often used by retailers that don't 'get-it' ...don't understand the importance of trust in modern business. But for supermarkets like this to grub around in these murky waters is astonishing. We all knew price establishing went on, we all knew non-essential merchandise wasn't discounted as heavily as other high profile products (if at all) ...but to package things under 'bargain' banners when they are simply not better value has even surprised a practised retail observer such as me - and I feel embarrassed for trusting these retailers!

Over the years, we've all forgiven these supermarkets for coming down hard on farmers in the name of passing low prices onto customers. We've all acknowledged the remarkable work supermarkets have done to reduce the percentage of household income spent on weekly food bills ...but trust me, this goodwill will soon be gone if these supermarkets don't clean up their acts, and super-fast.

Thank you BBC and shame on theses supermarkets if they're found to be guilty, rather than incompetent.

Upto 800,000% interest rate from banks in UK

BBC radio headquarters

Radio at its very best! Money Box, one of the absolutely must 'listen to' weekly radio broadcasts from the BBC has recently announced that banks in the UK are charging, coming up for nearly, 1 million percent in interest charges for unauthorised overdrafts when penalty charges are annualised. Initiatives and actions such as this are particularly disappointing as I spend so much time addressing financial institutions about the importance of trust - as if they really need me to tell them this - but rightly they're keen to understand the 'trust mindset' of the world's best retailers...and they can trust me, it doesn't include this sort of customer abuse.

Six figure interest rates ...it's outrageous and eye watering in every sense of the word. As the BBC Money Box reported:
A customer borrowing £100 for 28 days without the consent of Santander would repay £200, for example. That is the equivalent annualised percentage rate, or APR, of 819,100%.  Please click here for the full BBC story.

I always implore the banks I address to internally 'remove' the prefix: 'Retail', from their descriptors until they've earned the right to describe themselves as such, earned the right to serve customers. Most banks don't think, operate or treat their customers the way retailers do.... and if they're serious about earning respect and trust from their customers they need a constant reminder and internal mantra:  "we mustn't call ourselves Retail until we act like retailers!" - this would be a great place to start and easily understood by the banking workforce.

Please see my previous posting about 'revenue earning units'. 

Revenue-earning-units or customers!

The wizards of finance and a Meeting of Minds - well maybe. But the financial world is at last realizing it must treat its customers as human beings and not 'revenue earning units'. I had a wonderful session recently addressing 120 or so senior financial wizards at: A Meeting of Minds conference in London. As joint founder of Owenjames, the conference organisers, James Goad had briefed me to open the day with some hard-hitting truths about the state of retail banking/financial services and what might be learned from some of the world's top retail brands. At these types of conferences, I'm always impressed by the customer ambition of these financial wizards and what they have to say... but in truth, as a customer, I haven't noticed a great deal of change over the recent past in terms of how I'm served. I'm minded of a quote by Friedrich Nietzsche the C19 German philosopher who observed: Madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups! - perhaps when these wizards get together they fall under the spell of a higher force who decidedly doesn't 'get it!'

Sure, on-line systems and banking is getting very slick but there's not much of a future (or margin) in this - it's the emotional connection with customers leading to a trusted relationship and add-on services that the financial industry need to come to terms with - just like the world's great retailers relentlessly strive for.

But nudging Nietzche's forensic observation to one side, it was a good session, lots of positive feedback and I thank James Goad for his kind words:

“Martin Butler’s charismatic delivery on the art of being chosen really struck a cord with our audience.  Too often speakers reel off the same presentation again and again, but Martin tailored his presentation for the audience to ensure it was relevant and bang on the money.  Well worth every penny!”

Thanks James and let's hope the wizards of finance will edge ever slowly towards true customer centricity - after all, the more enlightened leaders in customer service view shareholder value as an outcome, not a strategy!