I dont know if anyone else senses it, but it seems to me that there is a harsh panic tone in the business approaches and advertising of many retailers right now. Yesterdays Portland Oregonian had the largest collection of advertising inserts Ive ever seen. It is their largest paper of the year. I had not seen a newspaper this thick in maybe 20 or 30 years, and it was almost entirely inserts and full-page ads, mostly by national chains, but also by some locals. Many of the major retailers were open all day yesterday, ruining the Thanksgiving for their employees, to say nothing of trying to do it to their customers. And it appears large numbers of people fell for it. There arent many super products for sale, the have to haves and collectibles of the past. There is some reported evidence of the prices of some products actually being increased. I did see some some extreme price cuts on electronics and clothing, but they seemed primarily on goods slightly out of date, or at the end of their season. These Black Fridays and now ruined Thanksgivings, are a mistake, and they are wrong for our culture and our economy. From a business standpoint, I can say, having once run a retail business that combined bricks & mortar stores with on-line sales, that sales like these are not winning strategies. They drive down prices to the point that many retailers no longer can make any money. Only the very largest, with the greatest volume, and the greatest control over their wholesale prices, can survive in this kind of business environment. The smaller companies, the locally-owned, cannot. And when people crowd into the big stores to fight over cut-price items, they put themselves at the mercy of the giants, while killing off the smaller companies that provide better service, and often pay better wages to their employees. The Oregonian probably made a fair amount of money from yesterdays paper, but I wonder how many of those dozens and dozens of retailers did? We tossed most of the ads without looking at them, as we would have years ago when we were bigger consumers. There was just too much. Would both the newspaper and the retailers be better off with ads and sales done more rationally, and less concentrated? The Oregonian has cut home delivery of its newspaper on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. I am starting to get use to not having it. And it is a very good newspaper, a strong community-oriented newspaper with an intelligent plan to it. But cutting back those days (and those papers, especially Monday, were pretty devoid of ads) is not, I think, a very good long-term strategy. Nor is the participation of so many stores in this holiday sale madness. It is not good for them, and it is not good for our country. People should resist. They should not go to these sales. And if they dont some sanity will return to retailing, and everyone will benefit.
Posted on: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 17:06:28 +0000
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