-By Marshall Marcovitz

To be a successful retailer in today’s market, you need a lot of people: executives, managers, accountants, sales personnel and on and on. But somewhere inside that fog of administration, there are always a couple of anonymous geniuses, the heart of the company, the ones who keep the whole thing going: the people who actually come up with the ideas.

How do they do it? How do they come up with enough new ideas to keep your customers excited year after year? I don’t know how they usually do it, but I do know how they could and should do it: by listening in. Thousands of times a day, in retail stores, in restaurants, at industry trade shows or in their homes, all over the United States, people remark: “You know what my kitchen really needs?” — and they never suspect that they’ve just struck retail gold. Trade show season — the annual International Home & Housewares Show and the Gourmet Products Show — is the time for manufacturers to roll out their new gourmet pots and pans, cutlery, electrics and culinary tools, new everything, in hopes of kicking off the lucrative holiday sales season.

Where will the new ideas come from? From you! You’ve been “listening in” to those ordinary consumers who have been remarking day after day: “You know what my kitchen needs?” I’m leaving the gourmet products “listening in” to you. You could even expand your quest for the new and exciting to Twitter. Yes, ask your Twitter followers for their best kitchen products enhancement ideas. Hopefully, they will respond passionately and immediately (this is Twitter, after all).

Here are some out-of-the-box ideas for wished-for features for cell phones from a fantasy cell phone high-tech product survey:
1. Cell phones that wouldn’t ring during curtain hours
2. A display that shows if you’re calling someone with the same carrier, thereby making it a free call (what a winning idea!)
3. Cell phones that could send certain callers directly to voice mail (yours can, if you sign up for Google Voice)
4. Cell phones that beep loudly when they’re lost somewhere in the house (the iPhone does that, if you’re a Mobile Me subscriber)
5. Self-charging cell batteries that charge through kinetic motion as you walk around
6. Cell phones that are 100 percent waterproof

All right then, you get the idea: let the Twitterfest of fresh ideas begin!

Here’s another idea to help you turn a profit in these challenging times. How long has it been since you fine-tuned your business model? One thought is limiting markdowns in favor of full-price items, reducing inventory levels, lowering opening prices and increasing the mix of merchandise under $100. There is nothing like a good old-fashioned recession to make a retailer run a better business. Is it a mistake to order very conservatively in this year’s economic environment? Do you run the risk of not having enough inventory to beat last year’s sales? It’s not a mistake to order conservatively because retailers don’t know what’s happening with the economy. They don’t want to be in a position to take write-downs. I suggest being willing to forfeit some same-store sales growth is sensible. It’s more about productivity per square foot. It isn’t inventory that drives profit. It’s the right inventory that drives profit. Your job is to keep your company well-positioned for sustained long-term growth even beyond the expectations of near-term recovery. I suggest your focus needs to be on editing your merchandise assortment. It’s not about wading through tons of kitchenware products; it’s about focusing on editing your merchandise assortment.

Here’s another interesting new tech idea from the folks at Google. The media business is changing rapidly. Newspapers are losing money with their print editions and are aggressively testing electronic editions with similar content to that contained in the print format. In mid-September of 2009, Google introduced an experimental news hub called Fast Flip that allows users to view news articles from dozens of major publishers and flip through them as quickly as they would the pages of a magazine. Google will place ads around the new articles and share resulting revenue with publishers. Fast Flip is based on Google News, and attempts to address what Google considers a major problem with news sites: they often are slow to load, and so they turn off many readers. Google argues that if reading news online was closer to the experience of scanning through physical newspapers or magazines, people would read more.

Don’t you wish someone would come up with an idea to duplicate the in-store shopping experience? Will the electronic media ever have the capability to duplicate the excitement of seeing and touching the produce in person? The idea may be out there floating gently in cyberspace. Browsing news on the Web is much slower than it is in print. When it’s fast, people will look at more news and more ads, and that’s something that publishers want to see. Retailers have the same goal in their virtual shopping centers: more traffic, faster shopping, simpler checkout and more dynamic presentation of products.

Next time your virtual store gets another makeover, and you’re convinced you have the right look for shoppers, think about these possible changes:
1. Less cluttered home page
2. New dramatic logo
3. New entertainment section (featuring holiday cooking ideas)
4. Rebuild the technology underlying your Web site (making it easier to navigate and faster to move around)
5. Total site relaunch (advertise the big event to your buyers list and new prospects)
6. Present original content in a vibrant modern aesthetic

Another facelift is old hat, but a true makeover with exciting tech ideas will help you grow your business. A user-friendly recipe search engine could be just the right feature to encourage your customers to visit your Web site regularly.


Marshall’s Imagination Quotes

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
–Albert Einstein

“Believe that you have it, and you have it.”
–Latin Proverb

“You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”
–Mark Twain

Marshall Marcovitz is the founder and former CEO of the CHEF’S CATALOG, a leading Internet shopping site. Currently, he is a lecturer, a university professor and a marketing consultant. He may be contacted at mmmellow9@yahoo.com.