Something For You To Read On Labor Day

Here - give this a read - it's about a Boomer music industry person visiting Harrods in London (click here).

This is where some of my readers start yelling at me ... "WE'RE NOT HARRODS, WE'RE JUST AN APPAREL BRAND FIGHING FOR OUR LIVES".

Maybe you are fighting for your life because there is absolutely nothing special about you.

"WE DON'T CATER TO RICH PEOPLE".

Fine.

Even Safeway can make you feel special. They'll put a few bottles of $89 wine out for you to look at ... some Quilt for $39 ... and then you'll buy the Chateau St. Michelle Merlot for $12.99 (in quantities of six). Yes, you get a discount ... if you buy SIX of 'em. They've got Alaskan King Crab legs, and sure, they're pricey (and yet they somehow sell through them before they spoil), so you look at them and then you buy the farm raised Atlantic Salmon, which, is not Faroe Island Salmon or Copper River King but if you don't overcook the salmon and keep it moist it will taste darn good.

What are the three or four things you sell that are unique and special, that make a customer feel good, that your competition chooses to not copy or cannot copy? You have special items. Yes, you do!! 

What are the 3-4 things you are famous for? Don't say quality, convenience, service, or prices. Or trust. Those are terms used in 1977. What are you famous for? And if you can't answer the question, you just gave your marketing executive a task for 2025, don't you think?

The omnichannel movement of the 2000s and 2010s was an unmitigated disaster. You had to have 25,000 stupid t-shirts, in all sizes, in all colors, in all channels, all at the same price, marketed to your core customer.  NONSENSE! 

Why not have one unique t-shirt and you only have 750 of 'em in a limited number of colors and when you sell out you sell out - it's over!?? Create some urgency!

Look at Headphones.com ... they actually tell you their best-selling items ... look how many are backordered or sold out! Of their top-twelve best-selling iems, five (5) of the twelve (12) are sold out or backordered.

Yeah, you better act, right now, if you want something. It might not be available tomorrow.

And the best-selling pair ... the Moondrop Variations for $520? They tell you on their website that you can get nearly identical sound from a knockoff for $159 ... they're actually steering you to another (much less expensive) item, the Truthear Nova (click here). They're dissuading you from buying the best-selling item and it is STILL the best-selling item. There's no need to discount something when you can pull that stunt off ...

... in other words, you can discount by framing $159 against $520 ... the customer perceives that the customer saved 69% and got 95% of the quality. 

That's really, really smart marketing.

There's still time to change your focus. You have three or four items you are known for. Why not make something out of that? You have categories where you have an item that sells for $79 and a comparable item that sells for $39. Why not pit the $39 item against the $79 item, allowing the customer to perceive that the customer is saving 50%?? Why are you eating margin on the $79 item at 50% off (today only, a Labor Day special) when you can steer the customer to the $39 item and then market the living daylights out of your $39 item?

You have so many opportunities to try things ... go try some stuff, ok??!!

P.S.:  A decade ago I gave talks at conferences, predicting you would become "media networks" or "sports teams" ... having hourly/daily programming that held the attention of customers, having monthly or quarterly "events" not unlike sports leagues that you'd build up to with your hourly/daily programming. As it turned out, that concept became "community" and "content". A 40% off email campaign does not fit into this world. Use your content to speak to your community ... frame your products ($39 vs. $79), create events, build excitement, give your audience a reason to care.