Mary Queen Of Shops Brings Fashion To Banstead
The second episode of this 4 part series on fashion shops went very much like the first. The main difference was that the boutique concerned appeared to have more staff.
This time Mary Portas helped the shop's owner get rid of a vast swathe of old-fashioned gear that nobody wants to buy and is really just blocking everyone's view of the good stuff.
Yet again Mary concentrated on the shops tribe. This time it was "The Forever 40's. Interestingly the shop owner hadn't a clue who was buying her stuff. Or more crucially who she wanted to buy her stuff.
This is a recurring theme in almost any business you look at that's suffering from a lack of trade.
Mary persuaded her to buy designer stock and attract "The Forever 40's".
And of course the re-stock and re-freshed shop started to do very well.
Although I enjoyed this episode of Mary Portas pointing out the shops problems I'm beginning to think that all retail problems are the same. That is:
- Owner sets up and runs shop successfully, then several years go by ...
- Shop doesn't change with the times and
- continues to hold onto lines that don't move - sunk investment
- avoid change - just in case it's throwing good money after bad
- wont update - because it's money they need simply to survive
- Forgets who they want to sell to
- Shop becomes overfull of different and diverse items
- They continue to make a pittance for fear their customers will desert them
I look forward to the next episode when Mary will unearth a completely different problem to solve.
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