who's that lady in the umpire's chair?

welcome back!

it'll be interesting to see what all those public holidays did for retail sales...i was in cavendish today and was completely underwhelmed by the amount people shopping. during my time off i spent some time building a website for ker!ching. it's not going to win any awards but it is better than "the future home of..." that was there before. let me know what you think.
now for today's post...

i am a firm believer in concentrating on your offer and making it unique, rather than worrying about the competition. there is something i want to write about competition though. i have been into more and more stores recently where there is an elderly lady sitting on a tennis umpire's chair just inside the door.

these stores invariably have the word "china" in their name, and this old lady is their equivalent of the cctv camera. by way of example, i have been in two stores in particular, one in port alfred in the eastern cape and one in belville, between the middestad mall and the taxi rank. their assortments and pricing are very similar - and yet they appear to be family run businesses. mom is behind the till, the kids on the sales floor and of course, gran up on high in charge of shrinkage prevention. the question i have is "what is the relationship between these stores?"

bigger retailers know their competitors... their stores have similar signage, employees cv's come across their desks, their results are published in the press. people like raymond ackerman, whitey basson, doug murray, steve ross and many others have media profiles.

the problem with the "china shop" is not that we don't know anything about it, it is that we aren't trying to find out. who's doing the buying? who's doing the planning? where are the dc's? if they are family businesses, who is financing them? (i have even heard rumours of mafia involvement) what are their maintained margin targets? etc etc etc.. my point is simply that we study our traditional competitors very well, sometimes only because they are visible.

i hope to learn more about the "china shop" retail chain but encourage all retailers to look beyond their "old foes"...