Routinely, our nationwide dealer base of retailers and other business owners asks our company to provide advice. Our customer base, which consists of eye doctors, physical therapists, jewelers, rent to own stores, and home furnishing stores, generally calls upon us for advice to sell more of their products and services.
With my 25 years of big-ticket retail ownership experience, I truly understand and relate to the challenges facing our customers. Earlier this week while reading the daily newsletter from www.retailingtoday.com, I was struck by an article about Amazon and how it relates to the some of the challenges faced in retail.
Amazon clearly made news in December when 60 Minutes did a piece with Jeff Bezos. The story highlightsthe futuristic idea Amazon plans to implement: deliveries via drone right to our front door within hours of making an online purchase. The Retailing Today story is about a new patent Amazon has been granted. According to the article, “anticipatory shipping” is coming to a distribution center near you!
Retailing Today quotes a Wall Street Journal report from December that explains: “Anticipatory shipping would consider factors such as product searches, wish lists, returns, and browsing patterns to predict what goods customers will ultimately order. The goods would then be held closer to where a customer lives to reduce shipping time once it is ordered. Amazon has not publicly stated when it will deploy anticipatory shipping, whether it has ever used the technique, or how much time would be shaved off the typical delivery.”
The scary thing is, we don’t even hear these sort of questions from our smaller-to-medium size business owners. A typical question we get from a retailer is, “What should we do if a customer buys something online and they don’t live in our trading area?” Similarly, a problem I often get involved with is when a business owner tries to decide if same day or even next day local delivery can be cost effective for their business.
Our company was built to help independent business owners compete against the big boys. We all need to make certain we are competing on the same playing field. Rave Retailer is made up of our customer’s biggest fan. Let’s work together to solve your ecommerce problems today!