Excuses are like a**holes...everybody's got one.

Excuses are like a**holes... goes the old saying but lately everyone's got the same excuse.

'Sales are down due to increased competition from online' say the CEO.
'Online is killing my business' says the small shop owner.

By some measure they are both telling the truth but certainly not all of it.

Both sentences could be improved by adding;

'because we don't know how or are unprepared to make the changes to our business which will make us more competitive'

Online competition is affecting bricks and mortar retailers and some more than others but simply stating the problem and not doing anything about it will not improve the situation.

A few years ago I was working on a citywide retail strategy and we asked retailers for their input. Car parking and competition from online were seen as the two most common challenges.

Few of the respondents could identify which aspect of car parking was the problem - price, location or availability and most of them hadn't actually thought about it but they were almost unanimous that car parking was a problem.

Online competition was a different story, almost every respondent believed that customers were being drawn online by cheaper prices.

Now I'm not going to say that is untrue but one particular respondent caused me to think that maybe, just maybe, customers aren't being pulled, they're being pushed.

This gentleman is a jeweller and has had the same store for 30+ years, not quite and institution, more like a piece of furniture which is useful but probably wouldn't be missed if it suddenly disappeared.

His feedback was 'you have to do something about adding GST (sales tax) to online purchases because it's killing my business.'

In his mind, applying a 10% tax to online purchases would make online shopping so unattractive that customers would come flooding back and he would be there to welcome them with open arms.

To be clear, I have no issue with adding GST to online purchases, especially if it can be done efficiently but I do have a problem with lazy retailers thinking that all of their problems are someones else's fault.

Not long after this exchange, I visited his store and realised that online competition was the least of his problems. A fit out which hadn't been updated since the 1990's, product ranges* and marketing collateral pitched at Baby Boomers, lacklustre displays, unhelpful staff and really, just no reason to shop there.

This was all fairly obvious to me but for him, it was easier to believe that something he couldn't control was the problem.




* a few years later I found myself working in the jewellery trade and discovered that, despite advice from my upper management, it was actually quite easy to introduce new, younger, more interesting and more profitable, product ranges but for some reason the industry is very averse to change.