Tag: Sears

Reflections on Black Friday weekend 2017

Black Friday was the catalyst that turned me from a wise-ass cub copywriter, marking time till I sold a screenplay, into someone serious about their profession. Not a few years ago, I got a job as direct mail ad manager at the Broadway, a defunct chain of department stores in Southern California. One of my first assignments was the sale catalog to bring people into stores on the day after Thanksgiving. (No evening-before previews then.) I had to wrangle departmental buyers all of whom wanted more space than they’d been assigned, or wanted to jam more product into their allotted space. It was a nightmare. I seriously thought about quitting.

Then, on that morning (yes, we worked the day after Thanksgiving then) Marketing VP Jan Wentzel put me into his car along with my boss, Lisa Stanley. We drove to several stores to watch the people lining up to get in, and then lining up at cash registers–LONG lines–to purchase the very products I had been working so hard to present in an even handed way. For the first time, I realized that what I was doing had something to do with the company’s success and, by extension, all of us keeping our jobs.

In more recent years, I’ve pretty much ignored Black Friday, especially as it became easier to shop online. This year, at the goading of my teenager, I decided to check it out. I hit Walmart, Target, Sears and our local mall on Friday afternoon. I also made a serious attempt to find online deals which could count as Amazon-killers because they combined online and pickup-in-store shopping.

Walmart was the winner at that category. I bought a device which was one price online, but $30 cheaper if you bought in-store. However! You could order online for in-store pickup, know it wasn’t going to be out of stock, and get the same $30 discount. I did that and went to the store to pick it up, scanned a bar code at a kiosk, and realized I could buy a couple more things while I was waiting for them to bring it. Very smart, Walmart.

Sears was just sad. Not a lot of shoppers but even fewer cashiers, so there were still long checkout lines. What you’d expect from a store that’s teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

I like Target a lot but ended up buying just one thing from them. They had a nice sale on Fitbits as a doorbuster, but the model I wanted was gone. I found it on their website and ordered it. Unfortunately I then found it elsewhere at a lower price so the item will be returned. Feeling bad for Target, I spent a good amount of time checking their website for other bargains to buy, and returned yesterday on Cyber Monday when they were offering 15% discount and free shipping on everything. But time after time, when I got to the product page it was unavailable to ship, check inventory in store. Where I wouldn’t have the 15% discount.

The one sale product I really wanted was a Sony wireless Blu-Ray player, marked down from $119 to $49. It was “temporarily” out of stock online and finally disappeared from the website. Amazon, surprise, had it at the same price and I ordered it. Not going to the mall was more than worth the $7.50 in theoretically lost savings. Amazon wins again.

Online retail’s Obamacare moment

UPS experienced a surge of last minute Christmas orders and there weren’t enough planes to carry the packages, so many presents weren’t delivered till after the holiday. In some ways this is a good thing: consumer confidence suggests a strengthening economy and prosperous times ahead. But many of those orders had been placed with the promise of pre-Christmas delivery, so there remained the question of how retailers would make good their contract with their customers.

I had two affected orders, one from Brookstone and the other from Amazon. When I discovered the packages had not been delivered till December 26, I contacted both companies and let them know I was upset and disappointed and would like a response.

Brookstone was pretty straightforward. I contacted them using their online form, including the order number, and received this response: “This automated message is to let you know that we have received your inquiry and will respond to it as quickly as possible. We will be glad to assist you in any way we can.” Four days later, I’ve heard nothing further. This was my first online order from Brookstone, and it’s good to know how they handle customer problems. For me and Brookstone, it’s one and done.

Amazon’s order was supposed to arrive two days before Christmas, not one, according to my Prime membership terms. I navigated the byzantine online help system to find a form I could actually fill in. I didn’t need to tell them how long I had been a Prime member or how much I spend because they certainly know this; I did let them know it was far from the service I expected and paid for.

Amazon’s response was a $10 credit (against my $50 order) and a one-month extension of my Prime membership, worth $6 and change. Doesn’t seem like a very significant accommodation to a valued customer. Perhaps they feel they already have secured my loyalty and don’t have to bend over backwards; maybe newer Prime members got a more significant adjustment and bigger apology?

As with the healthcare.gov fiasco, many of the shoppers who were let down by incidents like these were likely first time online buyers; their mistrust in the internet has been confirmed and it may be years before they try online ordering again. For Obamacare, that meant that the most desirable prospects—young people who didn’t have health insurance because they didn’t think they needed it—were scared off. With this year’s late retail deliveries, the first time buyers would have been late adopters who are more expensive to acquire, more expensive to maintain.

While we’re on the subject of the trust between a customer and a retailer, I had a remarkable experience with Sears that is only nominally mail order. I wanted to purchase an item online for in store pickup and, because it was out of stock at my local Sears, I ordered it at another store 25 miles away. I finally went up there last Friday, order confirmation in hand, and was told they didn’t have my order because they’d sold the goods to somebody else after the order was placed, and the item was now out of stock so they’d have to refund my money. Pretty straightforward, but completely wrong. I’ll continue to work on this order and will report back on what I learn.

Welcome back, Lands End copywriter!

Lande End Irish linen catalog
Got to love an all-copy cover!

In my copywriting class I use the Lands End catalog as an example of great catalog copywriting. They are unexcelled at building on details about a fabric or a tailoring process until it becomes irresistible. The story may be about a buyer’s obsessive desire to solve a fitting problem, or about the scientific process by which a synthetic fleece can be light yet warm. Often it’s accompanied by personality profiles of a tailor or a happy wearer.

If you are used to seeing Lands End catalogs in the mail, you probably have no idea what I am talking about… because in fact the examples I use are well over a decade old, before Lands End was acquired by Sears. Recent Lands End catalogs are pretty much like any other midrange fashion retailer’s.

Which is why I was so excited by the spring Men’s book in the mail last week. The cover and the first six pages are all about Irish linen. “We could bring you assembly line linen at a lower price but wouldn’t you rather have the real thing? Here’s the very best, the linen of knights and kings, fearless RAF pilots and world famous rogues.” That’s the headline of the opening spread and I’m already reaching for my credit card even though not a single product is sold here.

The sell begins comes on the next spread, which educates us about the fabric: “Linen comes from long, golden fibers encased inside the woody stalks of the flax plant. Extracting them takes months, which is why fine linen is so prized. The basic steps have changed little from the time of the pharaohs…” Note that these are generic descriptions of linen, but because Lands End takes the trouble to research and tell us its story, the fabric becomes uniquely theirs by default.

The next spread is about linen pants and it has a little repetition, making me wonder if they hired some superstar copywriter and could only afford a few copy blocks, which were then cut and pasted to create new ones. If so, I hope it’s one of the old crew lured out of retirement.

If you received this catalog, take a close look at it… there’s much to be learned. (And order from it, so Sears will discover hard sell is not always the best sell.) If not, I’m delighted to find there’s a continuing feature online called “Anchors of Style” (terrible non-descriptive title incidentally) in which part of the linen story is currently available here.