In trying to decipher exactly what direction I want to take my company, I have been noticing other businesses around me. So everyday experiences are important. I take notes...I observe how it's done, so I can do better.
Over the past few weeks I, like many other folks, have been engrained in the holiday shopping frenzy. It was this time last year that I was already done with all my Christmas purchasing because I used the Internet to buy all my gifts. It was great. A few clicks of the mouse and packages showed up at my door several days later.
This year I did venture into the shopping malls and was duly underwhelmed. Nothing on the glitzy shelves or in the trendy windows sparked any "gotta’ have it" passion. Not even the newest iPod; I knew that in time there would be another model...so why bother? But still people around me clamoured for what they considered to be the ‘hot new thing.’ It was disappointingly impersonal.
I live outside of Washington. My father moved us into Bethesda, Md., in 1972, into a six-bedroom house. Back then, going to the mall was a completely different experience. It was about finding things you really needed.
Montgomery Mall had a real cafeteria-style restaurant called the Hot Shoppes. It was owned by a family, started by the Marriotts as a mom-and-pop shop. It gave the place a different feel. It wasn’t a white-table cloth restaurant, but an extension of the family table. The mall also had a shoe repair, dry cleaners and drug store.
There was also another family-owned store - Garfinkel’s - a-high-end department store that quietly offered quality items. Today’s stores scream at you. They scream that their products are the biggest, the best, the whatever.
But by the 1990s, the mall had become less utilitarian and more of a destination spot. But like any amusement park, once you’ve been there too long, you get bored. But our fascination with all things luxe - or mostly faux luxe - has deadened our senses to what is truly good craftsmanship. I stood on the top level of the mall and tried to think about what was there that I had not bought before....that the people on my list had not received before. There was nothing. No originality.
The Internet expanded my options. I found a local seafood company that sold wonderful crab cakes, steaks and other local items from the Chesapeake Bay. Local, yummy and different.
Also different at the malls, too, was the idea of customer service. Today, there is none. I suspect that most sales clerks even know what it is. For those who might read this: Customer service is knowing about the products you are selling and being able to find the product that best suits the customer’s needs. What it is NOT: Pointing to a shelf and saying, "Go get it." Shopping is the one areas in which people are routinely treated badly (both by the stores AND the credit card companies) and they still return time and again for more abuse.
In building my business it is my goal to return to the Old World tradition of product-making and serving my clients. It is a part of what gives me joy and makes the experience my clients have with my company that much more special.
I ventured into Toys R Us this season with a sense of dread. Last year, it was the most miserable place on the planet during the holidays. Toys should invoke a feeling of happiness and joy - the potential for making a child happy with a yo-yo or a doll. Instead, the last time I stepped into the place, it was dirty, disorganized and the sales people appeared on the verge of mass suicide. Not so this season. I walked in and found an entirely different environment. Neat, clean, bright and...fun. I could find what I needed easily. And when a clerk volunteered to take my purchases to my car for me, I think my knees got weak. What a difference a year makes.
What I found out later was that the Toys R US CEO Gerald Storch revamped the presence, inventory and attitude of the company - which goes to prove that any company's culture comes from the top. Anyone who says different is WRONG.
My point here, I guess, is that a business, mine or anyone else's, can't survive without appealing to the personal. And, the bigger a business is, the tougher it is to do that. It is tougher to manage the details, no matter how many "operational manuals" you might have. There is always one cog that doesn't quit fit the machine, no matter how well it's oiled.
That is what I miss the most about products in the United States, that attention to detail. In some regards industrialization and the machine age was a curse. It ushered in mass production, but kicked out that personal contact people crave.
That is why farmers' markets do such steady business....and the neighborhood barbershop will never die out. Humans crave connection...even to the products they buy everyday.
Kathy A. Gambrell
Founder
ChesapeakeBayBathandBody.com
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