How to Fix Department Stores??
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OK, without a doubt, we’ve talked about commercial real estate. We’ve talked about retail here in the United States and the issues. Well, I’m going to fix retail. I’m going to fix department stores right here on this program today, because obviously the people running these companies don’t know their buttocks from a hole in the ground. So it’s a story, you know, how Macy’s, Kohl’s, and Nordstrom are chasing millennial Gen Z shoppers.
how they’re gonna try to get them into the stores. All right. Let me talk about experience in department stores. I really don’t like buying stuff online. I just don’t. I like to see stuff. I like to see the quality. And when I need something, I know what I want. I know what I’m gonna have to get. I wanna go and I wanna get it. But I also want to be able to try it on.
How many out there have had the experience you go to a department store and you see something that you want, but they don’t have it in your size. They don’t have it in your size and they tell you, well, that’s okay. We can order it for you. But I don’t know if it’s going to fit. You know, I, for one, I kind of got an odd body type.
certain things fit me well in a certain size. They don’t fit me well in other sizes. I might be an XL in this brand. I might be a large in another brand. I want to try it on. And I don’t want to have to go through the process of actually trying to return stuff. I don’t have time for that nonsense. In today’s day and age, today’s day and age, you would think, you think, because again, I can go on Amazon right here when I’m done and I can get stuff that I want delivered to me today. If not,
tomorrow. So you know, you got the Amazon trucks out and about, you got UPS trucks out and about, you got the US Postal Service trucks out and about. Why not, you know, I’m throwing this out there to the retail stores, why not have and design your store, design your store to have one size of everything, one size of everything on the floor that you carry. So you can try it on when you come into the store. You know what, you can have a
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Back room, back room where you can have all the other side. If you have it, you take it out, you bring it to them. Everything on the floor is for people to look at, to view, or to try on. That’s it. That’s it. You could either reduce the footprint of your store or you can actually carry more items, be a little bit more dynamic. That’s up to you. That’s up to you. But you also say, hey, you know what? Okay.
We don’t have it in stock. We don’t have it in the back room, whatever it may be, but we’re going to get it to you either today or tomorrow. And you make that happen. Think about how much they would actually save in loss prevention as well. With people trying to steal things from the stores, how much easier it would be to police. Not to mention you have much better customer service. You’d have more people on the floor actually helping the customer out. Again, sometimes you go into some of these department stores, you’re like, does anybody actually even work here?
at this point in time, then you have a runner. You have a runner that’s able to go out, have a back room where the products are and bring them out. I remember working was one of the worst jobs I ever had. How many odd jobs that I had back when I was in high school and college, worked at the gap. Not for very long. I hated it. I hated it. The utter stupidity of the gap, even back then with.
I know let’s have a stack of t -shirts this high that had to be folded perfectly. And then if someone was looking for a size up like Jenga, the whole stack of t -shirts would come down. I had to freaking spend my day folding t -shirts. I’ll be doing that in purgatory someday. But then how dumb is that? How dumb? Wasting your staff members time. You have to pay staff.
to fold t -shirts again and again and again and again. You don’t need to do any of these things anymore. It doesn’t make any sense. You need to rethink your entire model for the times. And if you do that, guess what? You’ll be able to cut costs down other areas. You’ll be able to put more items in your store. Guys like myself, last time I went in, I needed certain things. I needed some new, you know, casual shirts. So I go, I had to pick up my suit.
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I go to pick up my suit, I’m looking for things and, don’t have that in your size. We can order it for you, but I don’t know how it’s gonna fit me. So I’m not gonna order it. I’m not gonna order it. Where they could have sold me a whole bunch of stuff if the stuff fit me and I could have had it delivered to my house that day, the next day, whatever it may be, I would have. But for them not to even have it, even for me to try on, stupid. I don’t know who runs these retail outlets, but.
Talk about box stores. I’ll be talking about dumb as a box of rocks and how they go about running their businesses. Watchdog on wallstreet .com.
