Winning at Retail

What can we learn from a Canadian fruit and vegetable retailer?

I have worked with Pete Luckett over the last few years and I am constantly amazed how a small business can really buzz.

Pete sells fruit and vegetables, Pete’s Frootique, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Everyone who goes to his store also has to go to the supermarket which is also within the same shopping centre, which sells identical products to Pete.

So why is Pete so successful? Probably because he is the best retail innovator I know in the Americas. He has won awards for the best innovator on small business and is now a regular personality across the nation on the television show The Food Hunter.

What can we learn from Pete’s innovative ways?

In a short article like this I can only list a few of them.

Create an Experience, Don't Sell Commodities

Customers are bored with seeing products on retail shelves, they are looking for more exciting experiences. The challenge is, are you in the commodity business, selling products or are you providing an experience.

Commodity sellers place tangible items on shelves and benches and sell units of product. The challenge is always to increase the average sale per customer, one way of achieving this is to introduce service and services i.e. activities you execute. Many retailers have achieved this by providing delivery services, demonstrations, tasting stations and technical knowledge.

Now is the time for retailers to move on and provide an experience. This means we should create an experience for the customer where they are fully engaged with what we are doing. In the USA, Pike Place Fish Market is looked on as the ultimate experience in Seattle’s retail scene. In Canada it’s Pete’s Frootique. Australia, the Beechworth Bakery in Victoria, many would argue, creates the same experience. Whilst in South Africa, Lifestyle Garden Centre is recognised as a global leader in the experience market.

Food Retailing or Food Entertainment?

Food retailing is going through a global revolution. On one side of the equation companies such as Walmart, Aldi and Liedl are gaining market share as local commodity food retailers.

Where does this leave the independent food retailer and does he have a future? If you ask Pete Luckett of Halifax, Nova Scotia in Canada, the answer is a definite yes. As the food giants move the industry in one direction, the independent retailer has no choice but to move in the opposite direction and to make food shopping an entertaining experience.

Retail Success is Anything But Beige!

Billy Connolly, the Scottish comedian often jokes about his obsession with “beige” people, people without character who are quite literally beige in the look and views on life.

Billy’s perspective on people could equally be applied to retail business. Retailing has developed into the hourglass environment, with the “beige” business being squeezed in the middle. Being “beige” in retailing is a recipe for failure.

Retailing growth and development today is occurring at both ends of the hourglass. At one end is the commodity retailer, the category killer, box store retailer and Supermarket environs. At the other end are the niche specialists providing a unique experience for the consumer. The “beige” retailers are stuck in the middle with no clear direction of where they are now or where they should position their business in the next five years.

A Retail Experience?

Dubai, the land of retail experiences. One week a shopper can go to a mall shop and go down a ski slope, the next have an Indian experience followed by an Arabic and Chinese retail experience. They can shop in a Chinese dragon and visit a traditional Arabic souk. Dubai is a land of visual retail experiences that provides the largest variety in the most intense space, plus there is more to come.

It’s More than a Visual Experience

The important thing to remember is, as retailers, the visual experience is the theatre, we have to set up the plays (retail displays) and select and train the actors (sales people). The phrase, “the world is a stage” is never more apt than in retailing.

8 Essential Steps in Building a Customer Experience

1. Recruit people with personality. You can train product knowledge.

2. Have regular product knowledge training sessions and make them compulsory.

3. Provide a company policy of what are the minimum standards for customer service.

4. Train the team in customer service and cultural awareness.

5. Employ a mystery shopper organization to check procedures are implemented.

6. Provide the team with progress reports.

7. Mystery shop your competitors to ensure your customer service excels theirs.

8. Reward team members for success and provide positive feedback.