Years ago, I published a column that received more attention from retailers than any I have ever written. Over 95% of the retailers who contacted me saw themselves as the “bad store,” so it’s probably time to do this again in lieu of the fact the number of independent flooring dealers has been cut by two-thirds in the ensuing years. The small amount of negative feedback I received was related to the use of the word “bad” to describe stores that didn’t operate in the fashion I described. I stand by the use of the word.
Let’s begin with store hours. In many of my sessions I asked the question, “How many of you open on Saturdays?” Most hands went up. The follow-up to this question was, “How many of you close at noon on Saturdays?” More than half the hands went up. My retort was if you close at noon you aren’t open on Saturdays. If retailers kept a sales patterning book that all professional retailers keep, but incredibly no flooring retailers do, you would know this.