Sharpening the Sword is a regular column by retailer John Riley of Grasshopper's Comics, a 1300 square foot comic and games store in Williston Park, New York.  This week, Riley talks about managing change in retail.

Over the past nine months I've written quite a bit about reinventing your store for the mass market.  It's not that I'm in love with the mass market, it's just that every day tens of thousands of potential customers pass by our stores while we continue to fight over the same few established customers.  So when I saw an article on a mass market retailer that had to reinvent itself to regain its own customer base, I found it very interesting with some lessons that we can surely learn from.

Safeway is the third largest supermarket chain in the US, and had lost its focus.   After posting years of double digit gains the chain posted its first annual loss since going public in 1990.  In a way, they were in the same position that we are.  Wal-Mart and other big box stores were moving in to take over the ultra discounted low end market (sound familiar?). Meanwhile, specialty stores were taking away the profitable high end goods (like eBay and specialty sellers now dominate high end back issue sales).  This left Safeway floating in a fast disappearing middle ground.  Safeway had to continue to offer the same values their customers expected, but add higher quality goods and a new stylish atmosphere to continue to compete.

The biggest challenge though was that the customers had to believe that this was a real change in the nature of the company, not just window dressing.  Marketing gurus refer to this as 'authentic marketing,' which basically translates into 'telling a story that the customer believes.'  We've all seen stores that failed to do this in the past.  How many new identities did Sears try out over the past fifteen years or so?  Even Toys R Us has tried to reinvent itself with limited success.  The problem with these reinventions is that they are only surface deep and instantly feel phony once you enter the store.  In the case of Safeway other supermarkets had attempted to put on a new face in the past and failed.  Yet Safeway has been highly successful with their transition. 

So how did they do it?

First of all, they 'told a true story.'  Rather than just bringing in higher quality goods, they slowly reinvented the area for those goods.  They upgraded the racks, floors, signage, and lighting so that those goods felt natural within that environment.  In effect, they created a complete picture.  Anyone can just post some signs about their intentions, but filling in all the details of the picture makes it convincing.

Secondly, they delivered first, and then promised.  I think this is something we can all learn from.  At every level of this industry we have a habit of living in the future.  We know storylines that won't happen for more than a year.  The publishers are busy promoting the next series rather than finishing the current one.  And what happens when those promises aren't met?  Everyone at every level is disappointed and everyone in the chain from creator to publisher to retailer looks bad.

The same thing can happen in your store when you let people know in advance what you're hoping to accomplish.  By delivering before you promise you effectively ensure that your story is true.  In Safeway's case, they spent three years improving the food quality before they mentioned it to their customers.  When they did, their customers already knew it to be true.

And thirdly they didn't oversell, that is, they made what felt like a natural progression to their customers.  Sometimes my customers joke that they can't leave the store for very long because it will always be different when they come back.  I take this as a great compliment as hopefully the store is constantly evolving toward some higher point.  But make too radical a jump and you risk alienating your existing customer base and diminishing the worth of your 'brand.'

These three concepts had a big impact on a decision we made just this week.  On the way down to the Baltimore Summit we spent a few hours in the car going over some strategic planning.  We decided to roll out a 'Miniatures Academy' program to instruct kids/new players in the basics of the miniatures hobby, which is something we did informally many years ago.  We were very excited by the idea, and wanted to roll it out immediately to maximize the exposure during the holidays.  But instead we've chosen to wait.  Why?  Because we don't want to promise more than we can deliver.

Instead we're taking two months to fully prepare the program.  We're developing the curriculum, the informational brochures, the website support, the physical materials we'll need, and also the follow-up materials for when the students 'graduate' into the hobby.  After all, once we've initiated them into miniatures gaming we'll need to have games for them to participate in!  By developing everything first we ensure that we will in fact deliver everything we promise and can more than satisfy our customers' expectations.  Or in this case, their mothers' expectations!

In our industry we often don't get a second chance to make a new customer happy.  And unfortunately there are far too many unprofessional stores out there to give the general public a negative impression of our industry before they ever reach our own stores.  By ensuring that we 'tell a true story' and 'deliver before you promise,' we can go a long way to ensure that we get as much benefit as possible from every new customer's visit.