by Michael Sansolo
MNB has from time to time come back to the Barnes & Noble revival as an example of how bricks-and-mortar retail can achieve relevance even in the face of enormous competition from the digital sector. I think it is worth doing again, largely because there are three very specific areas where the food retailers – especially independents – should be taking notes and making moves.
First, for context, take a look at this video from Bloomberg Businessweek:
Lesson 1: Barnes and Noble clearly moved away from acting as a real estate agent, positioning books based on support from financial publishers. In other words, Barnes & Noble essentially rejected the notion of slotting allowances and endcaps because of supplier fees; it returned to the business of selling books people want to read. In the food industry, we’ve long talked about this in terms of retailers needing to make money based on the sell, not the buy.
Lesson 2: As the Businessweek report makes clear, Barnes & Noble pursued a strategy of decentralization in the places where it mattered – what books are displayed and how they are displayed. Store staffers have been empowered to react to identify local tastes and trends and then respond. Imagine the same thing happening in food stores, with menus and both fresh and packaged offerings reflecting deep local knowledge as opposed to the presumptions and assumptions of corporate bureaucrats working off spreadsheets.
Lesson 3: For Barnes & Noble, it is all about books and reading. For supermarkets big and small, creating a differential advantage should be all about food and eating.
In the case of Barnes & Noble, the hiring of a new CEO – James Daunt – who was a bookseller on both an independent and large scale and who clearly was a book lover, made all the difference.
Now, not every supermarket CEO needs to be a gourmet, but it certainly helps if they love food. Love to eat. Maybe even love to cook (though that could be a bridge too far). And it would be equally helpful if department heads – both at the corporate and store level – felt the same way about food.
Companies and stores have regular meetings to review the numbers and department performance. Imagine if they also had meetings in which people were required to talk about some meal they’d recently had that blew their minds and expanded their taste buds. Maybe where everybody got together to cook something that is being sold in the store.
I’d guess that every supermarket company would benefit from having someone in the role of Chief Foodie, responsible for inculcating a culture that respects and celebrates food and understands that food – especially in the current competitive environment – can be a significant and authentic differential advantage.
It wouldn’t be the same for every company, of course – a value-centric or price-oriented store would do it differently than a specialty food store. An IGA store never is going to be Dorothy Lane Market. And shouldn’t be. But an IGA store still is selling food, and there’s no reason not to work to have a community’s best doughnut program, or distinctive barbecue, or something else that resonates.
There’s another lesson here. In the book retail business it isn’t just Barnes & Noble – which admittedly has considerable resources – that is growing.
As an Associated Press story the other day pointed out, “The latest numbers from the American Booksellers Assn. show independent stores expanding at a pace not seen this century. Membership in the ABA grew by more than 500 over the past year, to a total of 3,417 (at 3,783 locations), nearly triple what it was a decade ago and the highest level since the late 1990s. The surge included stores of various kinds — general interest shops like Hey Books! in San Diego; mobile stores like the Wandering Quills Bookshop in Westerville, Ohio; pop-up stores like Banyan Books in St. Petersburg, Fla. Many of the new members reflect the current boom in romance, fantasy and their hybrid, romantasy…”
Keep in mind that these independent retailers are lining up not just to compete with Barnes & Noble, but with Amazon. Their stores work because “independent bookselling, rarely a way to get rich, is a meeting ground for idealists — for young people with a sense of mission, retirees embarking on a new life or middle-aged people no longer satisfied with their careers.”
There is a lesson there, too. Great food retail can be centered around the idea that a supermarket can be a meeting ground for food enthusiasts, creating common ground and community. The reality is that for food retailers to distinguish and differentiate themselves these days, they can’t go by the traditional book.
They have to write new chapters. Their own chapters.
Michael Sansolo can be reached via email at [email protected].
His book, “THE BIG PICTURE: Essential Business Lessons From The Movies,” co-authored with Kevin Coupe, is available here.
And, his book “Business Rules!” is available from Amazon here.
The post Sansolo Speaks: Retail Success, By The Book appeared first on MNB.
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