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Bartlett Joseph Associates is an independent retail industry
management consulting firm headed by Mr. Robert Bartlett. Mr. Bartlett has been an industry practice leader in a major multi-national
consulting firm and has over twenty five years of experience in working with senior retail industry executives throughout
the United States and around the world. The focus of his current practice is business strategy, organization and management.
Why we love retailing
It's about identifying and serving consumer needs. Everyone gets to vote with their
feet for the combination of products and services that meet their lifestyle needs.
There are few barriers to entry by entrepreneurs of all stripes. There are few
barriers to exit for outdated formats and the industry has a remarkable ability to recycle real estate, employees, customers
and capital. Consumers always win.
An over $4 trillion dollar industry that makes the US economy the envy of the world
and is in turn the locomotive for the global economy. What's not to love?
Summer 2010 - Back to the Stores In the early eighties, my late Partner Tom Rauh and I sponsored a highly successful series of seminars
on electronic shopping. We didn’t know it at the time but we were talking about the role of e-commerce in retailing.
I later conducted a lecture series in Japan on the subject and always ended up with a picture of a young girl in a department
store clutching a beautiful dress. I posed the rhetorical question – can any catalog or computer screen match the pleasure
of touching and feeling the merchandise in the store? This Saturday, my wife took our daughter (turning 14) shopping at the Westfield shopping center in San Francisco.
She was looking for a middle school graduation dress. Apparently, the only store that had a moderately priced selection was
Macy’s (Good for you Macy’s!). There was a long line for the changing rooms, mostly high school girls. Each of
the girls was texting away, including my daughter who sent pictures of herself from the dressing room to her two
best friends for approval. “Cute but isn’t it supposed to have shoulder straps?” came the reply. When she
got home she was thrilled with her selection because it was pre-approved by her target audience. Most retailers I work with are trying to figure out how to leverage
the internet and social networks and some believe that a pure play e-commerce business model is the answer. But it occurs
to me that the killer shopping App is not about price or selection but about emotion. The cell phone is an emotional force
multiplier when the customer does not have to rely on the opinion of a salesperson (or their mother) to have a great shopping
experience. How this plays out when these youngsters are buying adult clothes I don’t know. But if strong emotions and
the support of close friends are important it may turn out that the retail store is more impervious to e-commerce inroads
than I had thought. The new iPhone with its video chatting function is going to show up in the dressing room, the jewelry
counter and even in the home furnishings department. The customer knows best and they know whose opinion matters most. Retail
store offerings and the changing room itself can be center stage again.
Winter 2009 - It’s about people A number of my retail clients seem to be weathering this storm pretty well. There is no sign that
unemployment numbers will improve any time soon, however. So it is not surprising that the best advice I can give anybody
working in retailing today, at any level - is to focus on serving the customer and to add value, at an individual level. Great retail CEOs know that they are accountable
to the internal stakeholders as well as the shareholders. They know that they must give every employee the tools, training
and systematic support that they need to succeed in serving the customer and adding value. The ability to connect each store
via broadband internet to centralized task management and program material distribution systems is huge in this respect. Retailers
who are still able to think and to use this period of economic uncertainty to go to the next level of store operations management
can build a competitive business barrier that may last for a decade or more. Look around at the people working in the store
the next time you visit a department store, discounter, supermarket or drugstore. You’ll quickly see if they are in
cost cutting mode or building people for the future. The retail worker of the future will need to be computer savvy and accountable
for getting each aspect of the job done efficiently. Real empowerment, more job satisfaction, higher productivity and better
career stability are all possible. It’s time.
 Winter 2008
It’s a jungle out there. Our dog Tucker was attacked by a Coyote last week. He survived with a number
of bites. This time of year the Coyotes are very aggressive and will not back off their prey easily. We live in beautiful
Marin County and in the habitat of mountain lions, coyotes, and otters, all of whom survive by hunting. Only about 10% of
coyotes born survive their first year. In January the Coyotes will be “denning,” that is, digging nests and having
babies or “pups.” If it were a nature movie, you would be rooting for them to catch our dog so that the young
coyotes would survive. It’s a very useful reminder that the natural world is not safe - that we do not control the world
around us. That we are not, any of us, “masters of the universe.”
We are all
humbled by the financial collapse. Good thing too, we need to teach our children to live within their means. The trappings of corporate governance have
not served us well. What auditors saw this coming? What Board of Directors? What CEO? What management consultant for that
matter? We allowed the government to muck things up.
But the American entrepreneurial spirit
is strong. It’s why I fell in love with this country when I emigrated from the UK some 35 years ago. Entrepreneurs create
the jobs and drive the culture. Retailers know how to plough things under and to start over. No bailouts asked for or expected.
Retailers, unlike banks, were the first to make consumer customer service a metric of industrial output. Retailers pioneered
consumer credit. American retailers built a locomotive to haul the global economy. It’s not the fact of retail bankruptcies
that shocks us, it’s the unprecedented scale of the market collapse.
So this could
well turn out to be retailing’s finest hour. Close some malls, refurbish others. Build destination stores that consumers
want to shop. Recognize that the world has changed and global market rules have changed for good. Use the technology or perish.
Start breathing, lick our wounds and let’s get on with it.
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