Business SMART:

The MBWA Program is Free!
 

By: Dennis A. Conforto
A-Z Media Group

You can learn a lot when you just take the time to look. At CHA when I wasn’t on stage speaking that is just what I did, I looked. Senior executives at large companies call it “MBWA” which means “Management by Walking Around.” The best part is that it’s free!

I did a little MBWA through the CHA SMART Store. I remember last year so many said that having the crop room in the center of the store was a waste of good retail real estate. Yet in my MBWA this year I saw that having the crop room in the center of the store forced the natural traffic to walk counter-clockwise around the whole store. I loved it because everyone knows that if you can get the consumers to walk around the whole store then it is even more likely the consumer is going to spend more money. The nice thing is that this year everyone who came to the store noted how the traffic naturally flowed throughout the whole store.

What was viewed as last year’s bad idea was this year’s great focal point. It’s funny to see the difference a year can make in a new idea coming to the surface and being accepted as a great idea. And that is the idea behind creating the store in the first place - It was done to create ideas and generate more great retail ideas going forward.

Anyone can take a shot at an idea but few are willing to step up to the plate, build an idea up and then share it with others to see what they thought, felt and saw in the idea. Most people like to say that your idea can’t be done, or that you’re wrong. But in truth the worst idea of all is to have an idea and never share it, improve on it and then create it so that you can improve on it again.

It’s not about if an idea is wrong or bad. It’s about different degrees of being right. Some might think the kid’s crop room at the front of the store would be better served in the back of the store, others in the center of the store and still others would say they don’t want a kid’s crop room in their store at all. Which one of these four thoughts or ideas is right? They all are right to each independent owner. The important thing is to see new ideas and learn by implementing the idea in the way that best serves you.

The CHA SMART Store 2 offered lots of new creative ideas and if you really took the time to look and study you would have seen tons of new ideas that could potentially make your retail environment SMARTer. Retailer after retailer said, “I can’t wait to get home and change my store around.” I love it when that happens. Those that have made changes in their stores have shared with me the improvements they have had in sales and profits just by getting a few great ideas to work within their stores.

Even better were the comments and feedback I got from manufacturers who loved the idea of brand featured areas in the store. Those manufacturers quickly learned that they had to become the worldwide expert in the retail selling of their products. Prior to this time, they believed that they had to be the experts at selling to retailers. Now they are extending the relationship right to the retail floor and to the consumers who shop those stores.

As it turns out, the whole CHA SMART Store is about co-branding and helping retailers and manufacturers understand the retail floor is key to both parties in terms of their joint sales and profits.

It is time for retailers and manufacturers to take control jointly of the retail space found within great independent stores. Co-branding is one of the keys to success for independent stores.

If any manufacturer has a great brand then they can answer this one question, “How much retail space in terms of square footage does your brand have in the United States and Canada?” If they can answer that question then they are on their way to becoming a consumer brand. If they can’t then it tells me, the investors and even the consumers that they don’t manage their brand on the retail floor.

A brand that is not managed on the retail floor is not a brand at all. Packaging is not managing the brand - it’s only part of the process of true branding.

Here is a prediction for you that you can take to the bank. When the Martha Stewart line is released shortly, it will be released to the big box formats first! Why? Because Martha knows how to manage the brand right down to the retail store and she will know how much retail space she has. Then she will want to know what sales are per square foot and will work on increasing those sales. She will be able to do that because she will have the information she needs, or her staff will need, to manage the brand.

Now, if Martha Stewart does it because she got the idea from looking at how other great brands manage retail floor space what makes anyone think they can short sheet a standard everyday business practice of brand management? When it comes to brand management rules, you can’t break those rules without first breaking yourself against them.

If the definition of a brand is a promise kept, then how can you keep the promise if you can’t manage retail space? If you can’t manage the retail space you simply will not be able to keep the promise of your brand.

The CHA SMART Store is so much more than what a quick walk around the store could ever reveal. It’s about how an industry can work together to create a great shopping and learning experience for the consumer. This cannot be accomplished with retailers working independently from the manufacturers and the manufacturers can’t accomplish this by working independently from the retailers.

Think about this, wouldn’t it have been great if the independent channel was so strong that Martha Stewart would have chosen that group first to release her products? The better the independent retail and manufacturing channels work, the more likely it is that new brands are released within these channels first. SMART brands go where the real money is first. Our goal is to make that place the independent channel by clearly understanding the power of co-branding and brand management. And that is what being SMART is all about.