Last night I attended my local Chamber of Commerce monthly meeting. It was a fairly normal meeting, in that someone always raises the questions about the number of currently vacant shops, and how sales are being affected by negative comments etc and what is "everyone else" going to do about it.
During general business one of our successful local fashion retailers raised a question, is anything going to change with GST on goods purchased online overseas? She felt that this was hurting her business greatly, she has "friends" that shop online regularly and buy clothes similar to what she sell, from mainly overseas sites, at greatly lower prices than what she sells her products for or can buy them for herself from her current suppliers.
This got me thinking!
The world is much smaller now, I hear from retailers regularly that they often feel like showrooms for online retailers, customers come in, ask lots of questions, play with the products, try on clothes and shoes to find the correct size and say that they will be back, but mostly never return.
I get asked regularly how should they combat the rise of online sales. Should they sell online?
There are lots of buzz words and experts spruiking about omni-channel and multi-channel retailing, bricks and mortar stores, and what the future will look like. It is very clear that certain retail categories are changing quickly, newsagents and video rental stores, to name two, are having to quickly adjust their business models to survive.
What I see is that your typical retailer no longer has to just look at the local stores as their competitor, but they have to look online as well in their categories and see what is trending there as well. That does not mean that they should sell their products at the same price, but they should at least see how they may be able to compete What value can they add to what they sell? This can be the level of service, after sales service, product information and so on. When a customer purchases something online, can they return it easily? Swap a size or a colour? What happens if your product breaks down, or you need it to be serviced? These are questions that need to be asked, and the sales people you have selling need to be aware of how to put that doubt into the customers mind of what will they do if something goes wrong?
Every retail business selling products should look seriously at if they should sell online. I have seen some very successful local, small town retailers become very successful in doing this, and opening themselves up to an untapped market. In many cases their success in online selling has increased their shop front size and range, further increasing their success.
Whatever view you take, one thing for sure is that retail will continue to evolve and change. The successful retailers will be those that adapt to what the customer wants and delivers on how they want to buy their products.
At the end of the day, the customer will always drive the change!
Keep the whole purchase process as simple and quick as possible, that is always a key element. Keep me waiting, and I walk!
Good trading,
Geoff
