Word: retailing
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...been maximized to its full potential." After decades of bankruptcies, closings and consolidation in the industry, Macy's may soon be the last traditional, mid-priced mall-based American department store standing. Its future matters not just to Federated shareholders but also to a $100 billion chunk of the retail economy. Everyone from fashion designers to cosmetics companies to small-town malls is praying that Lundgren's strategy works. Department stores have struggled for years: they've cut service, cut prices, cut inventory and still lost customers to cheaper (Wal-Mart) or more stylish (Kohl's, Target) discounters...
...logical evolution of decades in which the industry failed to respond to customer complaints that department stores were boring, the service nonexistent and the merchandise ubiquitous without being interesting. "Department stores have lost sight of their customer. It's that simple," says Janet Hoffman, a San Francisco--based retail strategist for Accenture. Sales tumbled, and chain after chain of historic, family-owned retailers--Gimbels, Woodward & Lothrop, Wanamaker's, Montgomery Ward--closed their doors or were swallowed up by stronger companies. In 1980, about 35 major department-store chains were in business; today there are only 13. The merger...
...their jobs and take full advantage of the chance to rant, without mercy, about shoppers' bad behavior. "Do not wait until one minute before we close to come into my store and expect me to wait patiently while you browse and then don't buy anything," chastises Retail Recorder, a blogger who identifies herself only as a store manager. The cell-phone saleswoman who writes a blog called Can You Hear Me Now? describes why a customer became furious: "Because we wouldn't let him return DSL equipment to our store. Uh, we don't even sell DSL equipment...
That makes shoppers perhaps the perfect fodder for America's newest form of back talk: blogs. Once limited to the occasional coffee-break rant with their colleagues, salespeople are turning to the Web to vent about and occasionally mock the bizarre customer encounters that make working in retail so, um, interesting. "One day a male client called and asked that I bring over some foot-cream samples," writes Birdie Jaworski, an Avon lady, in her blog, Beauty Dish. "He not only wanted to try them on my feet, but then he wouldn...
There is, however, a higher purpose to all that digital sarcasm. Most salespeople who broadcast the stories of their rude customers hope to shame others into acting better, says retail veteran Norm Feuti, who spent 15 years working as a manager at a host of stores. Instead of blogging or just complaining, Feuti created a comic strip, Retail, now syndicated in 43 newspapers, depicting the staff at the fictional department store Grumbel's. Feuti is an equal-opportunity scold. His strip features not just the customers chatting on their cell phones in the checkout line but also the clerks...