Local Men’s Store Saves Banana Republic

In the quaint Boston suburb of Andover, Massachusetts last weekend my sister-in-law was married. In preparation for the wedding I decided to buy a new suit and two weeks ago went shopping. My wife and I settled on a navy blue, pinned striped suit at Banana Republic (which had been developing into my favorite clothing store).

The suit, because it had a price tag of $500, came with a security tag on the outside of the right pant’s leg. As my wife and I left the store, the alarm went off. We quickly ran back into the store for fear of being accused of shoplifting.

The clerk at the counter did some machinations and handed the package back to us. As we walked out of the store the alarm went off, again.

We tested it a little by walking slowly away and when no one from the Banana Republic store seemed concerned we kept walking and went home.

In getting dressed exactly 90-minutes prior to the ceremony last weekend, I looked down and to my horror was the big, beige plastic contraption on my inner pants leg by my right ankle.

What was this thing? The security tag, of course. I ran frantically around the hotel looking for some one or something to help me.

The only answer was for the front desk clerk to call the local men’s store. They invited me down to see if they could use their security tool to remove the tag. I ran down to KAPS Menswear on Main St. in Andover, Mass. and Jim, the proprietor, started working with all his tools.

Nothing worked and I was getting nervous as I thought I’d be hobbling to this wedding dragging this security tag with me and looking like a complete dork (or as Kramer in the Seinfeld sitcom would say, “a hipster doofus!”).

Then, Jim happened to notice the tag was installed on the seam of the pants leg. He had the store’s tailor open the seam, slide the tag out and re-stitched the pants in a matter of five minutes and I was on my way.

So, needless to say I’m am forever grateful to Jim and the professional team at KAPS Menswear and will think twice about my shopping at Banana Republic next time.

That’s the difference between having full-time haberdashery professionals operating a store and part-time teen agers working a mall job for weekend party and movie money.

What service lessons can you learn from this for your company?

Obviously the team at Banana Republic in our local mall is less than Championship Caliber, wouldn’t you say? What about your team?

It’s The Marketing, Stupid!

In the 1992 Presidential campaign between Bill Clinton and the first George Bush the theme that reverberated across the electorate was, “it’s the economy, stupid!” That seems to be the theme again this time around as the democrats try to recapture the White House.

I mention this because in tough economic times, business owners must remember that “it’s the marketing, stupid.”

It’s easy in these times where fear can sometimes overtake our rational thought processes to forget that business success always comes down to marketing. In good times it seems like business comes easily or at least easier and our marketing efforts generate the business we need without really understanding what works best and why. We get lazy.

I was reminded of this this past weekend I was in the suburbs of Boston for my sister-in-law’s wedding. I patronized three local businesses of note.

I was in charge of making sure the wedding couple’s vehicle, our SUV, was squeaky clean, so I had to visit a car wash. I had an issue with the suit I bought for the event and had to stop by and get help from a local men’s clothing store, and the third business was a restaurant.

All three were doing something new and special in terms of marketing I hadn’t seen before in their genre. The car wash and the restaurant had created “preferred customer clubs” which gave members special perks for repeat business. The men’s store had recently added some related services such as a hair salon and in-house tailor services.

It is imperative that businesses today look for ways to maximize the customer relationship. It’s no longer just good enough to allow customers to buy our specialty and allow them to walk down the street to another business for a related service we can easily figure out a way to provide.

We don’t want to extend products and services beyond reasonable capabilities and relatedness, but if you can bring in products and services closely related to your primary business, why not add it.

The “no brainer” strategy, though, is the preferred customer program. Invite your customers to sign up for special offers the general public won’t and can’t get. Offer incentives for repeat purchases. Incent shopping on what normally may be slow days.
This restaurant worked out a points system and offered double points for dinners on Monday and Tuesday.

How can you apply these strategies? Think about it, then e-mail me or call me and let’s brainstorm!

Or, join me next Monday, October 20th at 2pm Eastern time for my next webcast where I’ll be sharing a number of business building strategies in the “C” part of the C.H.A.M.P. business model. To register for the webcast you can visit:
www.WeismanSuccessResources.com/webcasts

P.S. - one thing you can offer your preferred customers is Free Gas rebates or Free Grocery Rebates. e-mail me to learn how you can for just pennies on the dollar and reward your customers for being loyal to your business! To learn more about this program go to:

www.WeismanSuccessResources.com/freegasprogram

Learn to Strategically Build Your Business With…

 

It would be helpful if you came to the call with a general idea of the following:
1) number of qualified leads coming into your business each month
2) closing ratio
3) average value/price of each transaction
4) # of times a customer buys from you each year (on average)
5) Gross Margin Percentage (profit margin)

These are the things we wil be plugging in to the Business Growth Calculator.