Letters

 

Readers again responded in droves to the perennially popular Norm Brodsky, adding their own two cents to the advice he dispensed in his March Street Smarts column, " Deciding to Grow." They were just as blunt in voicing their opinions on the state of customer service and on finding low-skilled workers, two topics we covered in April.

Service without a smile
Senior writer Susan Greco wrote about the state of customer service in her April feature story, " Fanatics!" This reader says many retailers aren't fanatical enough about the service they provide.

I spent the past four years with Joe Boxer as the director of retail services. The job had me traveling to 38 states and visiting about 80% of the malls in each of those states. I know customer service both as a consumer and as a traveling brick-and-mortar maven.

I know I had high customer-service expectations at one time (I think they ended sometime in the early 1990s), but now it's the exception to get good service when you're shopping, no matter where you are.

I've started to use E-commerce sites, although I swore I never would, because the service is good to great and I can avoid the stores. I never thought I'd use a service that required me to pay for shipping and then wait for my order, but shopping in the malls has become excruciating.

Jeanmarie Smith
Account Executive
Pop Icon
Irvine, Calif.

Back to basics
In her April feature story, " Help (Still) Wanted," senior writer Rifka Rosenwein explored the challenges that employers continue to face in seeking low-skilled workers. She also reported on the techniques that several company owners have used to find employees. One reader wrote in to remind employers that sometimes it's the simple things that can help retain workers.

As one who once worked in the low-skill trenches (fast food, telemarketing, and so on), I can tell you that being paid a living wage -- not to mention being treated with dignity and caring instead of like a child or a criminal (I was neither) -- would have meant so much more to me than the gimmicks the employers you profiled are using to attract workers. Many of my early jobs had rules and regulations whose only purpose seemed to be to dehumanize workers and let them know just who was in control of their every movement and thought.

People who are made to feel important and valued will stay at a job even if they could be earning more or getting better benefits somewhere else -- as long as they're being paid a living wage. Low-skilled workers in general feel battered by life and society, and making them feel as if they matter can often overcome a less than ideal work situation.

Teresa Barragn
Office Manager
ATTM International Ltd.
Houston

Patent pending
In his March From the Front Line column (" Patents: An Idea Whose Time Has Gone?"), Brad Mead, president of the investment-banking firm Delta Capital Group LLC, questioned whether small-business owners should bother trying to patent their inventions. This reader advised his peers to proceed with caution.

I was pleased to see that you shed some light on the usefulness of patents and the flawed system surrounding their issuance. Having recently survived a costly patent lawsuit, I can say that the article is a must-read for entrepreneurs who are about to patent their inventions or who think they're safe with the patents they have. My company could have gone to trial to prove that our ice-sculpture-molding method, for which we had purchased the rights, was the first of its kind. But for a small company with limited financial resources, the court costs would have put us out of business long before the case ever went to trial.

Kudos to you for the article. I hope that readers will take note and do their homework before heading down a costly and sometimes worthless path.

Dennis Wold
President
Ice Occasions
Houston

Gorilla in the missed
In March's Obits column, senior writer Rifka Rosenwein profiled Red Gorilla, an online time-tracking and billing company that closed its doors in October 2000. This reader offered his own diagnosis of the company's ills.

You seem to be making the assumption that Red Gorilla failed because of its upselling strategy: giving away basic services as an enticement to get customers to pay for premium services. That assumption is both facile and faulty. Using such a strategy is a time-tested marketing tool, and there are plenty of instances -- even in the dot-com arena -- where it has worked successfully. For example, Hoover's Online (a well-known provider of company information) gives users access to its basic company capsules and financials, with the hope of converting them to paid subscriptions that offer much more detailed profiles, officer lists, and financials. The strategy has been a successful one: subscriptions accounted for 46% of Hoover's $19 million in revenues for 2000, and the company anticipates reaching EBITDA profitability by the end of the current quarter.

A more logical reason for Red Gorilla's demise is simple: it spent far too much money developing a service that not enough people were persuaded to buy. Perhaps if it had spent more money on building a sales force and less money on stuff like lavish offices and ego-trip neon signage, it would still be in business.

Jeff Kirk
Austin

Small is beautiful
In his March Street Smarts column, " Deciding to Grow," Norm Brodsky told the story of a friend ("Seymour") who was planning to expand the size of his store despite Brodsky's warning that he shouldn't. Several readers agreed with Brodsky's advice and offered additional insights.

After reading your article about Seymour and his business, Hot Pants, I came up with an additional point. I'm a great admirer of Walt Disney, the founder of Disneyland and Disney World. I've read that he had a theory that lines for his amusement-park rides begat long lines that begat longer lines. His thinking was that if a ride had a long line, then patrons at the park would think that the ride must be really good. I've noticed when I've attended his parks that the employees always manipulate the lines so that they look long, regardless of how many people are actually in them. Disney creates the illusion that its rides are in high demand.

With that concept in mind, I think an additional reason that Seymour does a great business is that his crowded store shows a high demand for the product he sells. Since most girls 13 to 18 want to be seen wearing trendy clothes and purchasing in a trendy place, his crowded store is the cheapest marketing he can buy. I would tell him: "Keep the status quo and don't expand into the neighboring space. Just keep doing what you are doing."

Todd Dice
President
S.V. Dice Designers Packaging Machinery
Walnut, Calif.

I thought you might be interested to hear from somebody who's already gone through what Hot Pants is about to go through.

I'm a retailer with 22 stores from Maryland to California. I opened a 5,000-square-foot store in a strip mall in Chicago in March 1997. It started off with a bang. Another 5,000 square feet became available next door, and we jumped at it. We thought that with more room for inventory, we'd do at least 25% better. The rent for the additional space was only $3,500 a month. We expanded to a total of 10,000 square feet, which nearly doubled our rent. However, our sales stayed exactly the same. Now, since all our competition has caught up to us, our sales have even slipped a bit. So we're doing less in a bigger space.

Would I do it again? No. I have a 5,000-square-foot store in a Memphis strip mall that is doing about the same level of sales as the Chicago store. The place next door is available, and boy, do I need the space. But I'm not taking it.

Barry Pener
Vice-President
Pener's Mens Wear
Kansas City, Mo.

This reader suggested that Seymour should do some research to identify the reasons behind his store's success before he decides how to expand.

A reasonable amount of "voice of the customer" research would indicate whether Brodsky's close-quarters and lost-sales suppositions are valid. That would take much less time and money than "running the experiment" of either expanding or building another store with the same concept. Anyone who is interested in taking the concept national would do such a survey. Seymour would do well to do the research now.

Dennis J. Crane A
CEO
Bvaluation
Louisville

House of corrections

On page 63 of the Almanac section in last month's Inner City 100 issue, the statistics for the number of black and Hispanic CEOs were inadvertently switched. The correct numbers: 15% of inner-city CEOs are Hispanic, and 13% are black.

The change in the corporate tax code that we wrote about in an April Hot Tip (on page 98) pertains only to very tiny businesses -- those with a quarterly payroll of less than $2,500. The change, which allows those businesses to pay their taxes quarterly rather than monthly, will affect about one million businesses this year, not several million.

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