Brick and mortars, don’t blame us

It’s a pret­ty com­mon myth that’s going around these days, that old-fash­ioned mom and pop busi­ness­es are get­ting gob­bled up by evil face­less Inter­net stores that have no retail space or human inter­ac­tion to add to their over­head. We’re sup­posed to feel sad and guilty for buy­ing a book from Ama­zon instead of a neigh­bor­hood book-sell­er. Our nostalgia—or more accu­rate­ly a nos­tal­gic-sound­ing delusion—calls us to the ide­al­iza­tion of in-per­son cus­tomer ser­vice, indi­vid­u­al­ized atten­tion, and knowl­edge­able shopkeepers.

Now as it hap­pens, I’m a big fan of the in-per­son retail expe­ri­ence, but the ben­e­fits list­ed above? They are few and far between.

I grew up in a town that did­n’t get a Star­bucks until five years ago, still has no Bor­ders or Barnes and Noble, and has nev­er had a chain record shop last for more than a cou­ple of years. Not because there was no mar­ket for these estab­lish­ments, but because the mar­ket was full of retail­ers pro­vid­ing excel­lent prod­ucts and ser­vice. A busi­ness mod­el that relies on cheap labor to com­pete with sales­peo­ple armed with exper­tise is doomed to fail­ure. Even after leav­ing for col­lege a lit­tle hunt­ing in a new town always led me to find the record stores that had peo­ple that would sug­gest music I’d nev­er heard of based on the pur­chas­es I made. Oh, you like Klaus Schulze? You have got to check out Con­rad Schnitzler.

Over time these sorts of places have been dis­ap­pear­ing. A vis­it to a record store means deal­ing with cashiers, noth­ing more. No longer is there any actu­al ser­vice, no longer are there any employ­ees who knew any­thing about music save what played on main­stream radio. Large chain book­stores and record stores have com­put­er kiosks where cus­tomers can search for an item, but only if they already know what they want. Book­store employ­ees, even at large chains, tend to be some­what bet­ter, but that’s not con­sis­tent. I’m not sure I can remem­ber the last time I asked for help at a book­store and got an answer with­out a vis­it to a com­put­er terminal.

With this lack of val­ue-add, what rea­son is there to vis­it a brick-and-mor­tar estab­lish­ment? Yes, there are excep­tions, but the trend is over­whelm­ing. Why is this? The rea­son is fair­ly obvi­ous: the man­age­ment of these stores are under pres­sure to keep costs down in the short term and there­fore tend to hire bod­ies rather than salespeople.

The A4 problem

I recent­ly wished to obtain some A4-sized paper. It’s uncom­mon to find ISO sizes of paper in the Unit­ed States, but I gave it a try. After vis­it­ing sev­er­al office-sup­ply stores and com­ing up emp­ty-hand­ed, I vis­it­ed Kel­ly Paper in San Fran­cis­co. Kel­ly Paper sells noth­ing but paper, with the pos­si­ble excep­tion of some inks for com­mer­cial print­ing. Their show­room is impres­sive­ly large, with a wide vari­ety of papers. These are the paper pro­fes­sion­als in San Fran­cis­co, and I could not find a sales­per­son that had heard of A4 or oth­er ISO paper sizes. I can’t fault them for not stock­ing any, but hir­ing peo­ple that don’t have enough aware­ness of their prod­uct to know that in oth­er coun­tries oth­er sizes of paper are com­mon? Even after explain­ing that I was look­ing for inter­na­tion­al paper sizes, there was no reg­is­tra­tion of recog­ni­tion on the faces of the col­lege-aged clerks who were the only help I could get.

Even when stores have staff that knows their prod­uct, man­age­ment has a way of get­ting in the way of an enrich­ing retail expe­ri­ence. I enjoy my trips to Sty­lo Fine Pens in San Fran­cis­co; the staff there is help­ful, inter­est­ed and expe­ri­enced with the selec­tion, use and care of their prod­ucts. I’m stop­ping short of call­ing them experts, but they are as close as any­one who wants to buy a pen needs.

Fine pens are, for a great many peo­ple, a pur­chase made on mys­tique and intrigue alone. There are a few of us out there who care about how pens work enough to pay atten­tion to func­tion­al design and mate­ri­als dif­fer­ences, but for the aver­age pen buy­er, it’s about brand and pre­cious met­als. Most so-called fine pens sold today are ball­point or roller­ball pens and I can tell you that a $150,000 roller­ball uses the same refills as a $250 roller­ball and that most $1000 roller­ball pens have the same refill that you can find in a $5 roller­ball pen. Is there going to be a dif­fer­ence in how they write? None at all. There’s even a hack online for mod­i­fy­ing a Mont­blanc roller­ball refill to fit into a com­mon­place Pilot pen.

Foun­tain pens are a lit­tle bit bet­ter in this regard. Gold nibs have dif­fer­ent per­for­mance char­ac­ter­is­tics than steel nibs because gold is a soft­er met­al than steel. Dif­fer­ent nibs and ink-feed sys­tems change many of the aspects of writ­ing from mod­el to mod­el. In many cas­es it’s still a mat­ter of per­son­al pref­er­ence, but there are char­ac­ter­is­tics of a $100 foun­tain pen that you can’t find in a $20 pen, as well as char­ac­ter­is­tics of a $1000 foun­tain pen that you can’t find for $100.

Whether a cus­tomer is look­ing for a tech­ni­cal dis­tinc­tion or sim­ply the mys­tique asso­ci­at­ed with per­ceived tech­ni­cal dis­tinc­tion, this is a mar­ket that requires sales staff to be respon­sive, per­cep­tive, and to know their wares. I very much appre­ci­ate that the sales staff at Sty­lo are ful­ly capa­ble of excel­lence in these regards.

Internet migration

Sty­lo recent­ly start­ed to do busi­ness on the Inter­net. I won’t link to the site while I’m crit­i­ciz­ing the busi­ness mod­el and deci­sions of the own­er, but they have a web­site now. I’m sure the own­er of Sty­lo is very pleased with the expan­sion of his busi­ness; there seem to be a lot of peo­ple buy­ing from Sty­lo with­out ever set­ting foot in the store.

There is just one prob­lem: the own­er did­n’t hire a call­cen­ter. Instead, the sales staff on the show­room floor has to field phone orders and ques­tions by email. What was once an excel­lent retail expe­ri­ence, one worth pay­ing retail prices for, is now a strug­gle to get the atten­tion of the sales staff who would clear­ly rather be help­ing the cus­tomers that walk in the front door but who can­not because the phone keeps on ringing.

I’d just let it go at that as an unfor­tu­nate man­age­ment deci­sion, except for one haunt­ing thought: as time goes by, the store own­er is going to look at the num­bers and see his Inter­net busi­ness expand­ing as his in-store busi­ness dwin­dles. He’s then going to do the next log­i­cal step, which will be to put more resources into devel­op­ing his vir­tu­al pres­ence while being unable to jus­ti­fy allo­cat­ing resources to his store.

In the mean­time, I’ve recent­ly done busi­ness with a cou­ple of excel­lent pen deal­ers over the Inter­net. Pam Braun at Oscar Braun Pens is help­ful and knowl­edge­able and has excel­lent prices. Michael Ran­dall at Cult Pens in the UK has bent over back­ward to help me find pens I was look­ing for that are not sold in the Unit­ed States, and fur­ther­more answered all my ques­tions clear­ly and made edu­cat­ed sug­ges­tions about the pens I might like. Michael was even so kind as to send me a sheet of A4 paper. Grant­ed, it’s the invoice for my order.…

Notice that I did link to the above ven­dors. I rec­om­mend them both and hope that my read­ers go buy lots of stuff from those two. I’m hap­py to be doing busi­ness with peo­ple online instead of face-to-face, because that’s where I’ve been get­ting the best cus­tomer ser­vice and a pre­mi­um retail expe­ri­ence. I would pro­vide a link to Sty­lo, but frankly, I hope that the web­site cus­tomers stop call­ing, at least dur­ing the times when I vis­it the store.

Does it sad­den me that I can’t walk in to a shop and expect to find help­ful staff? Yes, of course it does. But no longer can I wring my hands over the demise of retail stores. When they offer me excel­lent cus­tomer ser­vice, I’ll be hap­py to hand them my mon­ey. Until then, I don’t want to hear any whin­ing about the Inter­net killing your busi­ness. Hey, if you actu­al­ly served your cus­tomers, if you actu­al­ly respect­ed your cus­tomers enough to hire good peo­ple, if you let those good peo­ple do their jobs by pro­vid­ing val­ue to your cus­tomers.… Well, if you were doing those things you would­n’t have to whine about online com­pe­ti­tion, now would you?