“Power and speed be hands and feet” – Ralph Waldo Emerson The real DNA of a branded retail experience is increasingly less about having a different offer to your competitor. In fact, I am starting to realise that a traditional point of difference in a business sense is a reasonably static interpretation, with the only catalyst that creates momentum being innovation and reinvention. Many differentiated businesses in product range and even store experience have fallen by t
he way side. Why is that?
In today’s world of copy and replication, large retail environments of homogenous offerings claim their point of difference on brand, product, service, or location differentiation. But instead, what we have is a largely vanilla style of being different to our neighbouring retailer.
Two factors are emerging to ensure that not much remains of what was. Speed and impact are the crucibles upon which successful customer facing business is being built upon.
Firstly, speed or simply doing it faster than others – speed in brand impact, creating and innovating a product or service, faster internal processes, business information systems, initiation and response, delivery and communication, driving a faster customer experience with response and action in real time, and ruthlessly driving a faster ratio of productivity – faster to be trusted (an integral part of the commercial equation).
It’s interesting to see how many organisations value zero defects, and high internal and external speed to the point of measurement and reward. I wonder if online retailing has reinforced this aspect of speed for us.
Impact is an equally critical mandate for a retailer, or more precisely the effect or impression of one thing on another: the power of making a strong, immediate impression.
I once worked for a senior retailer who would always ask whether what we were doing was making an impact, and this has stayed with me when I look at a retailer’s offering and delivery.
Consumers increasingly search for retailers based on a premise of speed to them in an intimate and direct way, coupled with an impact that invites them to be part of that retailer’s tribe.
Being known for something, owning the space, creating impactful events from strategy to instore experiences, and having a culture of impact fuelled by speed and not constrained by management creates the genesis of a truly great fit retail business – think Zara, Apple, Virgin, Google, Facebook, Westfield, Walmart, Ikea, Tiffany & Co, Costco, and the list goes on.
Sure, these brands have plenty of copies present and emerging, plenty of would be’s, but what really separates them from their competitors is not the traditional axis of differentiation, but rather the strands of speed and impact within their DNA.
Happy ‘Fit’ Retailing
Brian Walker, Retail Doctor Group
* Brian and Retail Doctor Group can be contacted on 02 9460 2882 or by email on businessfitness@retaildoctor.com.au. For more information please visit www.retaildoctor.com.au
