Mine Your Own Business

Fighter Brands

Sometimes you come across an article that seems to have been written with much bigger companies in mind but that really is applicable to your business.  I thought this article fit that description. 

Setting up a “fighter brand” to allow you to advertise lower prices to get customers to come in during tough economic times while protecting prices on your premium brand seems great if you are a Procter & Gamble, but what if you are a mid-size company like Tacony or an independent retailer?  Then I started thinking about it and found that we do offer Flagship and Fighter brands in almost all of our businesses:

Flagship:  Riccar and Simplicity Vacuums
Fighter:    Fuller Brush and Carpet Pro

Flagship:  Tornado Commercial Cleaning Equipment
Fighter:    Powr-Flite and Piranha

Flagship:  Baby Lock sewing machines
Fighter:    Sewing with Nancy machines

Flagship:  Regency ceiling fans
Fighter:    Professional Series fans

So, we have the brands.  Can you use fighter brands in 2009 to help drive traffic to your store?

SmartBrief

 

We recently ran across a very useful service named SmartBrief that provides a FREE daily e-mail newsletter representing over 20 key industries offered in partnership with 70 leading trade associations. One of the e-mail newsletters is specifically designed for retail professionals. You can view some past popular SmartBrief stories here and also sign up for their daily e-mail newsletter by providing your e-mail address in the box on the right of the Web page.

Sign up is quick (it takes less than five minutes) and easy. We also ran across a very interesting article on boosting worker morale which is especially timely after the busy Holiday season and several months of upcoming winter.

Happy Boxing Day!

We certainly hope that many more boxes will be leaving your stores on this Friday than returning.

 

One of the most important parts of our Mission Statement at Tacony is to “Always Find a Better Way”.  Some might call it continuous quality improvement, but the idea is that we should always be questioning whether there is a better way to do something.  Hopefully, it protects us from becoming complacent and allowing our competitors to upset our business by finding the better way first.

 

With that in mind, what can we do in 2009 to make Mine Your Own Business more valuable to you?  We’ve got some ideas, but your ideas are really more important.  If you could make one suggestion for a New Year’s resolution for MYOB, what would it be?

 

Thanks for your help. 

Ho Ho Ho

And I heard him exclaim ere he drove out of sight,

Happy Christmas to all

and to all a good night.

Selling Is For People

So, it’s your last blog post.  After nearly 700 posts, how do you go out with a bang?  I’ve decided to pass along some insights from Steve Jeffery, the Senior Vice President of our Home Sewing Division.  We were reminiscing about days gone by and reflecting on how different things are today.  But one thing hasn’t changed.  People buy things from people. 

 

Nick Tacony knew that.  We all know that.  The best ad in the world doesn’t mean a thing if you don’t sell something to the person who comes in the door.  The sale happens when one person convinces another person that the first person’s product or service is worth more than the cash the second person has in his/her pocket.  That’s all there is to it.

 

When Steve was in the retail business he was a great believer in advertising.  He ran ads every week.  But he didn’t stop there. His entire store was pre-programmed to take advantage of the traffic that came into the store.  He told me that he used to re-hang his ceiling fan display almost every week to make it easy for his sales people to walk the customer through the selling process.  It was a smooth flow from the advertised model through the up-sell models and accessories, right to the cash register.  Sure it was a lot of work.  But it was work that paid off in sales and profit.

 

And when they got to the register, there were the impulse items, waiting to be added to the sale.  A retail sale is like a stage performance.  All the right pieces must be in place to have a successful outcome.  Can you imaging a Broadway play where there was no script?  There were no props?  No one rehearsed?  With some slight exceptions, every single performance of a successful production is essentially the same as the one before.  There’s no room for ad libbing.

 

We live in a new and exciting world!  As I’ve pointed out on this blog for almost three years, the new forms of electronic communication level the playing field between the “big box stores” and the independents.  Blogs, podcasts, social networks like Facebook and MySpace, and mini-blog sites like twitter are free for you to use and you can buy extremely targeted advertising to reach just the people you want to reach.  Considering the short time it’s taken to develop these tools, I can’t imagine what’s going to be available to you in the coming years.  All I know is that it will be exciting for those who chose to take advantage.

 

One of the famous sales trainers, I think it was Zig Ziglar, said “You have to treat the customer so many different ways that she has to like one of them.”  That’s the key.  The level of competition today is at a level unheard of just a few years ago.  Instead of losing a sale to the guy down the street, you can lose a sale to someone half way around the world.  You have to be sure that the experience of shopping with you provides value beyond just the merchandise in the box.  If you do that, you’ll make not just a customer, but you’ll make a friend.  And that friend will be excited to tell her other friends about you.  And when those other friends come in and find out that what they’ve heard is true, you’ll be building a constant stream of prospects and repeat customers that will get you through any economic downturn.

The Section 179 Deduction Might Save You Some Money

[Official disclaimer] Keep in mind as you read this that I'm not a tax adviser.  I've never even played one on TV.  However, I have stayed at the Holiday Inn Express.

Aparently Section 179 of the IRS code isn't widely known or understood.  In fact, it's fairly simple and can save an entrepreneur some money.  Here's the deal.  It used to be that if you bought a piece of equipment, you had to amortize the cost over several years.

Now, under Section 179, you can deduct the full cost in the year that the purchase is made.  According to Section179.org, the provision in the tax code, sometimes called the "SUV Loophle" or the "Hummer deduction" is intended to encourage small business owners to invest in their businesses. 

The site gives an example of the way 179 can be used to save money.  There are some limits, for example the maximum amount of the purchase is $800,00 which makes it a benefit for smaller companies and the web site offers a list of qualifying equipment.

If you've been thinking about buying a new truck or some other expensive piece of equipment, you might want to take a look at Section 179 and consider making the purchase before the end of the year.

The Last Weekend

Well, we're almost there.  It's hard to believe it's the last weekend before Christmas.  Depending on who you talk to, it's either been a good 4th quarter or it hasn't.  Dealers I've talked to tell me things are pretty good.  Even in a tight economy, people seem to find a way to spend for Christmas.

There's been some strange weather this month which may have affected things, too.  Here in the heartland, we were scraping windshields last night and this morning it was 50 degrees.  As I write this (at 4:20 PM) it's 38 degrees again.  They're telling us the HIGH Sunday may be in the teens!

Last weekend I was in Branson, MO, the big tourist destination in the Missouri Ozarks.  Traffic on the town's main street is legendary.  In spite of a number of other routes that have put in to relieve the congestion, the traffic on Country Music Boulevard was comparable to any summer weekend.  The outlet malls were full.  It took us an hour to get onto the parking lot of Silver Dollar City, the area's 1880's theme park.  It took another hour to get back out.  Apparently word of te recession hasn't reached the Ozarks yet.

So, as we enter the final weekend of Christmas, 2008, I hope you're finding ways to keep America spending and working. 

                    _______________________________________________________________

This Sunday at sundown begins the Jewish season of Hannukah.  All of us at Tacony Corporation want to wish our Jewish friends a blessed holiday.   Hopefully the rest of 2008 will be a time of peace and harmony among all the world's people.

                   _______________________________________________________________                   

I guess I have to write about this.  I've put it off about as long as I can.  This is also the last weekend that I'll be your blogmaster.  After twenty-nine years I'm retiring from Tacony Corporation.  Christmas Eve will be my last day on the job, but December 31 is my last official day.  (I'll be on vacation in between.)

Mine Your Own Business will continue with Bill Hinderer, our President and COO as blogmaster general.  I'm leaving you in good hands.

This is post number 679 of MYOB and I appreciate your coming along for the ride.  Frankly, most blogs don't last that long and I can see why.  Sometimes the creative juices flow and other days finding something to write about is like climbing Mt. Everest.  Thank you for taking the bad along with the good.  I'd also like to thank all the great bloggers and other journalists whose work has been the inspiration for so many posts.  I'm not going to try to name them all because I'll forget somebody and then I'll feel bad.  I would like to mention Doug Fleener, though.  Doug has been personally encouraging and his on-going support is much appreciated.  Krisha De and Anna Farmery have also been very encouraging.  Krishna was even nice enough to invite me to speak at Podcamp Ireland.  She's a brave lady.

If you're interested, I will continue on my own blog which you can find here.  But please stay tuned to MYOB because the future is bright and Tacony Corporation is committed to giving you the information you need to work ON your business, not just IN your business.

Last Minute Gifts

If you're still looking for last-minute Christmas gifts, here's a suggestion.  Actually, here are three suggestions.  I'm pretty sure I've mentioned these before, but they're the three books that I always keep on my desk where I can reach them.  All three are retail-related and would make great Christmas gifts for anyone in the industry.  Here they are, in no particular order:

The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber.  This is a must-read for anyone running any type of small business.  (My copy looks a lot like the picture.)

Marketing Your Retail Store in the Internet Age by Bob and Susan Negen. This is a practical, hands-on guide for running a successful retail operation.

The Profitable Retailer by Doug Fleener is another practical guide for the retailer who wants to make money (and who doesn't?)

Any retailer should have all three of these books in his/her library.

Is Shopping Better than Chocolate?

So you're too tired to exercise and you know that piece of chocolate will settle right in your midsection.  What can you do to get a similar high without the sweat or the calories?  According to recent research reported by Shopwise.com, shopping just might fill the bill.

It seems that shopping releases two chemicals in the brain, serotonin and dopamine.  Both produce a "high" or feeling of pleasure.  Serotonin is associated with mood.  Low levels of serotonin are associated with depression.  Dopamine gives us an intense level of pleasure. 

It's the release of these two chemicals, according to researchers, that make shopping such a pleasurable experience for some people.  A successful shopping trip leads to positive feelings of success, attractiveness and self-worth.  Of course the down side to all this is that people can become addicted to the good feelings that they get from shopping.  These "shopaholics" can get themselves into serious trouble, running up debts that they can't pay and destroying relationships.  But true shopaholics are rare.

But for the average person the shopping experience can be better than chocolate, exercise, or even love-making.  Besides providing the goods and services that are necessary for our standard of living, retailers provide a kind of "therapy" that can be very helpful to stressed-out consumers.  By providing a pleasant shopping environment for your customers, you can add to the "high" that they experience and help them to relieve stress. 

It's a win/win situation.  And, it's calorie-free!

Here's a link to a CBS news video on this story, but I couldn't get it to work.  Maybe you'll have better luck.

Small Business Tool from VISA and SCORE

Here’s some help in running your business from SCORE “Counselors to America’s Business and VISA.  It’s called The Financial Management Workbook and it provides ideas and guidance on topics from securing funding to managing cash flow.

According to SCORE, in addition to funding and cash flow management, the workbook also includes topic like managing collections, minimizing expenses, funding options, and being prepared for your business’ growth.

The 55 page workbook is free for download either from SCORE’s web site or from the Visa Business Network.