Business SMART

Business SMART:	Industry Standards
	By: Dennis A. Conforto A-Z Media Group

One of the greatest challenges facing the Scrapbooking industry today is the lack of industry standards. The absence of standards not only increases everyone’s work load but slows all the real processes that can save both time and money. I know something of industry standards as I sat on the U.S. Industry Standards Committee for Bar Coding and the Standards Committee on Electronic Data Interchange in the early eighties through most of the nineties. These committees were designed to help establish worldwide standards that would impact just about every business in the world today. The scrapbooking industry needs to identify every single detail of what it takes to have standards on the retail floors of every scrapbooking store throughout the world. These standards deal with bar code placement, packaging sizes, product information and so forth. Such standards are designed to reduce costs for everyone in the supply chain process, and are usually set by the largest retailers and manufacturers in the industry. The reason industry leaders set the standards is that they have the largest cost structures and as a result they have to look for ways to cut costs. Industry standards do just that very thing, they cut costs. What is interesting is if it makes sense for the largest retailers to cut costs through standards then it is doubly true for the smaller independent retailers who compete with them to do that very thing. The time has come for retailers and manufactures to set real standards that everyone complies with so that we can quickly move forward in cutting costs. At this year’s CHA SMART Store it was clear that manufacturers needed to consider standards to properly display a store without wasting space with packaging that didn’t fit on two or three-inch slat walls. Today’s retailers need to make every square inch of their display space profitable. Think about this from a display stand point; anything below the knee for the most part is just wasted display space. Consumers usually will not bend that low. Displays above eye level should not be product displays at all but rather examples of completed projects. The primary selling zone for the female consumer is a 15-degree downward look. Since so much of a store’s space is not really display friendly, the areas that are have to be perfect. To have it perfect, the packaging must be perfect which requires industry-wide standards. We know the aisles must be 4-foot wide or apart from each other to have enough distance for consumers to feel comfortable. Because these standards are not really set it causes many retailers to take on more retail square footage than what their marketplace can really justify. This means retailers are tempted to over buy, over commit on retail square footage, and ultimately lose money. I think the industry would be shocked how much space is wasted because of the lack of real industry standards. The question is what can be done? The answer is simple - play a meaningful role within the CHA Standards Committee. Then reward your vendors who seem to do a great job when it comes to making your store displays fit perfectly within your display units. You know when things really are fitting right… Share with manufacturers who may be less informed about packaging what is working and not working. They love great ideas and they love to get those ideas from retailers who are into the details of retail at every level. Every effort must be made by everyone to focus on the retail floor where standards or the lack of standards can be and should be the most effective. At a time where every cent counts, true industry standards are a requirement to our very survival as an industry. Industry standards are nothing more than a partnership which has been the common theme we have been talking about for the last few years. Partnerships are the key to industry profits and growth. Now the question is what are you going to do to be part of the process of helping the industry adopt standards that are both effective and meaningful? My hope is you will find a way to be involved in the process, seek to understand what limited standards we have in play today, and then gain the knowledge of what improvements in those standards will mean to your bottom line Is there enough power in one retailer or one manufacturer when it comes to setting standards? As in everything in life any industry movement always starts with the power of one. Of course, movements start with the power of one but always end up being the power of many. And that is what being business SMART is all about.