Retail Rambles (or, Hail to the Sheeple)

First off, obligatory Georgia update: I feel for all the world like a new father. Georgia is by turns endearing and annoying, sometimes both at once. Her bladder is only slightly larger than my wife's, and thus I must keep one eye peeled at all times for the ol' drop and squat. And the sensation of peeled eye is mighty disagreeable.
Tux is getting along much better than I thought he would. Georgia seems to worship the ground he lopes around on. We have Tux trained, every time he comes in the house, to ascend the three steps from our tiny side landing to the kitchen proper, turn around, and sit, so that we can clean his paws with a towel we keep for the purpose. Well, every once in a while, Georgia will come in, wriggle her way up the three steps (each one taller than she is), and immediately turn around and do a perfect sit. It's the cutest thing.
She's really cute, in fact, up until the moment she chomps down on some exposed skin with those vampire teeth of hers. Or when she has a dump. Jesus, it'll turn your socks inside out. Or when she begs to go outside for the third time in a night. The only thing that gets me out of bed is the sleepy thought she might be readying another dump: better out than in. Believe me.
By and large, though, I'm glad we got another puppy. So is Tux, I think.

****************************

My friend Jen wrote on her blog, just before Christmas, that she was worried about the lack of shoppers in her woods-neck. So was I, at the time, in mine. Now, last year, Christmas fell on a Saturday, giving us a full week of retail mayhem before the fact. It also meant that most stores would be closed the entire weekend, which lent shoppers a frisson of panic. (Close a store for just one day and watch the sheeple stampede the day before. Close it for two...)
This year, with Christmas on a Monday, it was widely believed that people would hold off until the weekend for the vast majority of their shopping.
They never came. At least not in my store. And not, from what I've heard, in many.

Oh, Wal-Mart did well, I was told. Now, I'm not a fan of Sam Walton's empire. I don't believe all the myths that have sprung up around it...it's possible to fight Goliath and win; the store's arrival in a small town actually creates more retail than it destroys (lots of stores want to locate adjacent to a Wal-Mart and feed off the business). There's no doubting it's anti-union, but, then, so am I.
No, my biggest peeve about Wal-Mart is the self-fulfilling prophecy retailers have built up around it. It's American, it's huge, we're doomed.
Wal-Mart has two major vulnerabilities. They pride themselves on service, but in my experience, their customer service is average at best. Some old coot grunting you a good day as he hands you a cart doesn't put me in mind of superior service. Again in my experience, they don't treat their regulars any differently than they treat first-timers...and they do nothing much to encourage first-timers to become regulars.
Their second problem, and it's almost as big, concerns their pitiful selection. Caveat: I haven't seen the new Wal-Mart Supercentres which claim to out-selection any of the discount banners at discount banner prices. The closest one of these behemoths to me is over an hour away. But [cue theme from Jaws]...they're coming...
The regular Wal-Marts have no produce, no meat, no bakery, no deli...just some grocery and dairy and a very limited amount of frozen goods.
And I'll admit what's doubtless another proof of impending fogeyism: I don't like the idea of buying groceries the same place I buy clothing. There are a couple of retailers advertising on this very theme right now: Pharma Plus ("buying your eggs the same place you buy your cough medicine...[we] put your health first")...which would carry more heft if they didn't stock a bunch of food. Then there's Black's, with that really...sweet...ad about digital cameras:
"Hi, I want to buy a digital camera."
"Sweet. What kind do you want?"
"Uh...I was kinda hoping you could help me out with that."
"Sweet. I'd get this one."
"Why?"
"It's sweet."
Those two campaigns sum up my feelings about retail. Do what you're good at, and do it well, and don't overgeneneralize. (Perceptive readers might question me on my love of Canadian Tire, which is general merchandise nirvana. Yup, and should they ever start selling meat, I ain't buyin' it there.)

But Wal-Mart does overgeneralize, at least in my opinion. It's not a popular opinion, obviously, because people like to shop there. (One other nuisance: rude customers abound in Wal-Marts. I'm not sure why this should be, and I hesitate to advance any suggestions for fear of being branded...well, never mind. But they push, they shove, they elbow, and then they give you dirty looks for being in their way.)

But Wal-Mart has enough clout that it sets the staple prices in town. If they want to sell butter for $3.49, we're all obligated to follow along, and never mind that butter costs us $4.19 a pound. Stupid, really. Staples like butter aren't, generally speaking, the sorts of things people will drive out of their way for.

Anyway, I found out where all our business went. Real Canadian SuperStore. They did $2.8 million in the week leading into Christmas. In ONE STORE. Think about that a minute. Add up your family grocery purchase for the week; then grab your trusty calculator and enter 2800000/that. There's a rough customer count for you. Nice, eh? I remind you, ONE STORE.

How did they do it? Two ways I noticed. One, their flyer was full of deeply discounted general merchandise, including DVD players for ten bucks (not a name brand, mind you...) The second thing they did was run a promotion Friday and Saturday night from 9:00-midnight: NO TAX ON ANYTHING IN THE STORE. (And the fine print taketh away: tobacco, pharmacy, and a few other categories.)
Now, I'm not a sheeple. I see "NO TAX" and I don't think "whoa, I'm cheating the government!" or "yowza, that means half price!" I'm not cheating the government; the tax is being paid on my behalf. And it's a savings of either six or maybe as much as fourteen percent. Picture that on a Boxing Week Blowout sign. "SAVE SIX TO FOURTEEN PERCENT ON TAXABLE ITEMS IN OUR STORE!!!!! IF IT'S NON-TAXABLE, PAY...REGULAR PRICE!!!!!"
Doesn't that just get your motor running? Yeah, right.
But see, you're not a sheeple, either. The sheeple descended on that place in droves on Friday and Saturday night.

The more I think about it, the more I'm willing to pay regular price on things to avoid the kind of mob scene we saw in Future Shop this Boxing Day, or what was seen in Real Canadian SuperStore pretty much all last week.

And here's the kicker. I'm pretty sure RCSS, for all the volume it did, lost money for the week. Margins in this industry are razor thin to begin with, and the loss leaders they advertised may have been heavy on the leader, but they were just as heavy on the loss. Try a little irony, it's good for your blood.

So now we're in the doldrums, the absolute deadest week of the year. We've got a two-day sale on Delissio Pizzas coming up: a two-pack for $5.97. Pretty impressive considering one's $7.47. But is it impressive enough to draw a crowd? We'll see.