Reinventing the Store

Introduction.
Seth Godin had a post the other day about changing the way retail stores display clothes. Basically he said that instead of having all the shirts together, have all the sizes together regardless of designer/pattern/color/whatever. And it's not just clothes that he suggests making changes for:

When you go to Home Depot to get what you need to build something out of wood, why don't you find the glue and the wood saws and the screwdrivers and the screws all together in a section called, "working with wood"?

Today he posts about responses to the original post. Of course he got a lot of responses in the vein of 'that would never work' because people don't like change. To me those responses are a variation of the 'we've always done it this way' which just makes me cringe any time I hear it. (it makes me look for a way to change it just so we can no longer say 'we've always done it that way') To quote Seth again:

The most fascinating takeaway for me is this: many retailers believe that they still have the power to inconvenience shoppers as a way of increasing revenue. "Too many stores in that mall," in my opinion, for me to stay with you if it's easier and more fun to go over there instead.

I go back and forth on this type of concept. Sometimes I want my stuff to be all over the place so that I can wander upon something I would have missed if everything I needed/wanted was in one place. Other times I want what I want in one place. Either I don't feel I have time for wandering and browsing or perhaps I am just looking for what I want and nothing else.

To elucidate these two ideas, here's some examples.

Example #1.
I love grocery shopping. If I spend less than an hour grocery shopping it was a failure. But I love to cook. I love spending time in the kitchen putting together recipes. I like searching out that ONE ingredient I can't find anywhere (hello rose-petal jelly!) for a recipe that sounds interesting. When I was in London and Scotland in two consecutive summers, we spent a good portion of our time there walking through grocery stores.

When I visited my parents at the beginning of this year, they took us to a cool grocery store near them (posted last week: Sendik's) and my wife and I spent more than hour going around the store, AND WE DIDN'T BUY ANYTHING.

When Wegman's first opened in Princeton, we spent more than THREE HOURS in the store, and again, didn't buy anything. We went to the store every day that week, and rarely bought anything. We just spent time exploring.

Example #2.
However, when I go book shopping (or to the library for that matter), I want to shop for what I want. If I want science fiction books, I don't want to wade through Fiction to find them. In fact, I hate that. If your bookstore/library has merged everything together, I won't go there again. If I want Fiction, I'll look for Fiction. If I want science fiction, it had better be in its own section.

I know there are writers and readers who hate categories and compartmentalizing of fiction. There are books and authors who could/should appeal to broader audiences and don't because their book is on the shelf next to book with a half-naked woman on the cover being eyed lasciviously by an alien. That is frustrating. As an editor/publisher, I know how hard it is to get people to break stereotypes and take a chance on a book that doesn't look (or isn't in the section) what they normally read. I don't have a good answer for this one. If I did, I would be doing that for a living. Even with great subject assignment and natural language searching, it's often not enough to place the book in front of someone to get them to break stride and try it. (try getting someone to try new food, it's the same line of thinking)

I also know that in the past I've sometimes said that I like all the fiction books (Fiction, science fiction, romance, etc.) mixed together. I no longer do. I want stuff separated. Imagine if you had to flip through self-help books to find a cookbook? Or if you had to sort through Sudoku books to find a car repair manual? That would suck.

Conclusion.
The point I take away from this is to consider reorganizing how you do things. How are your customers shopping? Do they seem like browsers or do they come in quickly and grab what they need? Do you have both? If you can determine how people are coming to your business (and it could be shirts, wood, legal services, etc.) then you can determine how to organize it.

The nice thing about an online store is--if it's set up properly--your customer gets to decide how to shop. They can sort everything together or have everything separate. It's tough to have both options in a brick-and-mortar store. Most places can't afford the inventory--in both space costs and dollar costs--to have everything together and everything separate options in the same store.

Something to Consider.
Perhaps the best option is to have an introductory section right inside your door that highlights what you have to offer (sort of like a physical welcome page) and then customers can expand off that list. It would be great if a store could have moving shelves and inventory so that I could go to a room/area and have the store physically reorganize itself to match my current shopping needs.