Build It & They Won’t Come

If you haven’t noticed, retail is dead. Okay it might not be dead, but it’s on its last leg. Block Buster, Sears, and Toys R Us have all been destroyed. Department stores are slowly being wiped out and there is nothing they can do to stop the change. The internet is the middleman’s assassin.

So what business are you in? If you rely on buying goods from some other company, and reselling them at a profit, you’re dead. You might not be dead today, or tomorrow, but within the next 5 years, you are dead. You will no longer have any value when your suppliers take their products directly to YOUR customers.

“My suppliers would never do that.”

Your suppliers can and will do that. They will, because, by going directly to the customer they can offer a better price and sell their product at a greater margin. It’s a win-win.

If you are in the retail industry, you need to immediately begin to create more value for your customers and your suppliers. You need to become irreplaceable to both groups.

How to become irreplaceable to customers:

• loyalty programs (think Sephora’s card system, you even get birthday gifts)
• convenience (think Costco, it’s cheap, fast, and you can buy a shit wack of whatever you need).
• customer service (think Harry Rosen, they’ll sell you a suit, tailor it for you, and even fix a button if it falls off a year later)

How to become irreplaceable to suppliers:

• become a traffic source (think Amazon, everyone goes to Amazon for everything, you could say that you won’t sell through Amazon… but who’s missing out?)
• create a subscription (think Birchbox, when you have people pre-paying for mystery products… you have the leverage)

Looking to learn more about becoming irreplaceable, contact our team at www.duomarketingsolutions.com.