Stew Leonard “He has an advantage in any deal whose merchandise will stand inspection.” —Roy L. Smith Does anyone really still believe that “the customer is always right”? Stew Leonard believes it, and that belief has served him well. At Stew’s dairy store in Norwalk, Connecticut, the customer really is king. Stew goes out of his way to listen to his customers and study his competitors in order to provide a unique and fun store in which to shop. Stew invites customers to participate in evaluating the store and even holds meetings to allow people to complain or comment on store operations. He regularly loads his employees into a van to visit other stores in neighboring communities. Their task is to find out what the competitors do better and to decide how they can implement those ideas in Stew’s store. Kids will find a petting zoo at Stew Leonard’s, and inside they will see “the world’s fastest layer,” a mechanical chicken that produces on demand. Stew encourages people to send in pictures of themselves with a Stew Leonard grocery bag, and he has over 5,000 such pictures mounted on the walls of his store. Some pictures are from as far away as the Great Wall of China. One lady requested that her most valuable belongings be buried with her in her Stew Leonard grocery bag. As a result of Stew’s attention to his customers, his dairy store regularly records sales per square foot that are ten times higher than the national average. Consider This: People really do know when you put the customer first. It is often the little things that make the difference, and paying attention to a thousand little details will add up to one big success.
Posted on: Tue, 15 Oct 2013 00:58:38 +0000
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