From: Jordan Bochanis <jordan_bochanis@brzoom.com>
Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2002 06:23:07
To: Tim Manners <editor@reveries.com>
Subject: SAM WALTON FOR A DAY!
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If "example is the school of mankind," then tag sales, yard sales, garage sales -- whatever you call them in your neck of the woods -- are the layman's Ivy League of retailing!
Everybody who works in marketing should have the invaluable experience of having a yard sale once in a lifetime (and not more than once).
For seven-and-one-half, glorious, 40-degree hours last week, I became the biggest retailer on my suburban block -- a Saturday morning Sam Walton -- got a glimpse into a value-conscious and frighteningly aggressive consumer segment and learned valuable lessons in retailing.
I learned that the secret, unwritten code of yard sale shoppers is that they are allowed to make up their own prices -- however arbitrary -- and that, unlike priceline.com, the backyard retailer is committed to the offer. Any questions about the cost of an item from a yard sale shopper are purely rhetorical, as in: "You'll take 25 cents for this antique dining room set, right?"
This is usually asked as the "consumer" is walking the chairs down your driveway and towards the family tractor-trailer.
Lessons were learned in having the right merchandise mix for the customer, too. I learned that if you took the Mona Lisa itself, hung her to the wall of your garage with duct tape and put a sticker on her that said $1.50, at the end of the day, you will have sold the duct tape.
During the course of my day, I was offered various denominations of coins for a rag I was using to dust items as well as the staples I was using to put up "Tag Sale Today" signs on telephone poles. I also had someone take all the crates filled with comic books off a card table and begin to fold up its legs en route to telling me that I'll take 75 cents for it.
I'll miss that damn card table.
Retailers take note: don't ask your customers about your advertising; it just reminds them that your prices are too high.
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The importance of advertising and a retailer's need to measure its effectiveness was another key lesson. We took a small ad out in a newspaper called The Connecticut Post, which by the way, has a Police Log section that makes the one in The New York Post read like the salutations in a church newsletter.
When my beloved customers made their purchases, I asked them how they heard about my sale. A few of them cited the ad. An even larger number said it was my bold outdoor campaign. But, overwhelmingly, the answer most of them gave me was "everything is priced too high."
Retailers take note: don't ask your customers about your advertising; it just reminds them that your prices are too high.
"Loss Prevention" is another important part of the retail world that I learned about firsthand. Well, the loss part, anyway.
During the recent Winona Ryder trial, I had the opportunity to hear and read "loss prevention experts" insights into shoplifting. The one thing that all the experts agreed on was that shoplifters come in all shapes, sizes, ages and sexes -- and that most shoplifters are amateurs.
Amateur shoplifters and amateur retailers make for a bad combination.
Every time someone inquired about the three, new, still-in-the-box Swiss Army Knives, and then left without buying one, I noticed one was missing. This led me to believe that there must be a huge Oliver Twist-type network of stolen arms dealers supplying a demand for criminals who prefer to do their dirty work with an engrave-able Sterling handle and two-inch Swiss-made blade.
Tom Ridge should include some legislation imploring yard sale retailers to keep all weapons in a locked case, or else put a sticker on them that says $20 -- an amount guaranteed to make yard sale shoppers walk a clear three feet away from an item at all times!
Amateur shoplifters and amateur retailers make for a bad combination.
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An elderly lady from the Ukraine who said she was giving me 50 cents each for a bunch of Yoo-hoo T-shirts I had for sale (apologies to Kristin Krumpe, but there was no room in the office, I swear!) bought $5 worth of shirts, adjusted her babushka, and disappeared behind a late-model minivan, only to return a few minutes later and ask me for the change from her $10 bill!
I emptied the contents of my pockets to show her that I hadn't gotten a $10 bill that day, but soon was overcome by a rush of things I think I have heard during my lifetime like, "the customer is always right"; "we'll cheerfully refund your money"; and "man punctured by angry Russian woman with stolen two-inch Swiss Army Knife" (I think I read that one in the Police Log section of The Connecticut Post).
So, I cheerfully refunded her someone else's money. I then watched as she walked over to an accomplice and handed over five dollars to buy a huge pile of items that my wife was trying unsuccessfully to stuff into a small plastic "Stop and Shop" bag.
I wonder if those loss-prevention experts have factored tag sales into their nationwide estimate of $33 billion dollars worth of goods stolen per year?
One last thing: if the woman who gave me two dollars for the kids' swimming pool and said she would come back to pick it up after she went home to get the other dollar is reading this, the pool is now buried under several inches of snow, approximately ten feet from the right side of the garage.
Just leave the dollar next to the Mona Lisa.
Jordan Bochanis is Concept Director of Bochanis, Rogan, Zoom, a marketing services agency with offices in Connecticut and Louisiana. He may be reached via email at jordan_bochanis@brzoom.com
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