Plastic Flappy Things – A tale of two retail stores
Friday, November 27th, 2009
I’ve just been to B&Q to buy some replacement blades for a modelling knife. Unable to find any, I ended up having to purchase a new ‘Craft Knife’ pack encapsulated in a teeth grindingly tough plastic blister pack. It contained three different knife handles (none of which I needed) and 12 blades (11 of which I didn’t need). I mentioned this waste to the cashier and he immediately tannoyed for any available member of staff. Two rapidly appeared and took me back down the aisle. ‘Well’ they said, searching through the blades section, ‘We don’t appear to have any’ (pointing to an empty display peg) ‘but I am sure that we used to stock them’. It reminded me of the great Jack Dee sketch.
In contrast, we had to purchase a couple of new suitcases recently. An online search found that the best offer was at John Lewis ‘Never knowingly undersold’ (well, most of the time). We drove over to the vast temple of consumerism that is Cribbs Causeway and dutifully trotted through to the suitcase department. Although the website said stock was available, the special offer was nowhere to be seen. Feeling slightly frustrated we asked for help and a bright young woman, with an impressive ‘Head of Suitcases’ badge, immediately appeared. ‘But we saw it online and your website said there was stock available and we have just driven thirty-five miles’ we whined rather pitifully. ‘Don’t worry‘ she replied cheerfully, ‘John Lewis is a multi-channel retailer now‘ and took us over to a computer, brought up their website, checked warehouse stock levels in the warehouse and said ‘We can have them delivered to your home on Tuesday for no extra charge, at the same price as you saw on our website‘.
John Lewis were late to the world of e-commerce and launched their website in 2001. The company’s aim was to eventually generate £100m in online sales. Last year the John Lewis online store turned over £327m, outstripping even their most successful department store and it is growing at about 30% a year. No wonder their staff proudly talk about John Lewis being a multi-channel retailer.