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Fall into the Gap

Guest post by: Seth Godin

Article Overview: Today, I visited a Gap store for the first time in a while. We all know that they've been having trouble, and it was interesting to see how they're responding.

Fall into the Gap

Today, I visited a Gap store for the first time in a while. We all know that they've been having trouble, and it was interesting to see how they're responding.

They're closing about 50 stores net this year, trying to make their business match the market. At the same time, it was pretty obvious from my visit that they're working hard to save money on sales staff, store designers and other expenses. It took me twenty minutes to check out. In the old days, it would have been two minutes. My reading of the Dip is that nickel and diming is a dumb strategy.

They should close 200 or even 500 stores and keep the very best people from each store, redeploying them to their best stores. They should invest in those great stores, invest in design, in targeted marketing. In other words, instead of shrinking themselves back to greatness, they ought to avoid the nickel and diming and go back to what made them great in the first place.

When your current strategy isn't working, doing the same thing, but just a little less of it, doesn't make a lot of sense, imo.

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Article Tags: gap, gap store, greatness, imo, money, nickel, sales staff, staff store, store designers, targeted marketing, twenty minutes, two minutes



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Re: The best time to open a new business - [quote="Tami Szabo":1209ledj]I agree. It depends on the business. However, in some cases there are ways around that if you allow yourself to open up to possibilities and get creative. For example, my husband and I are in the process of beginning a sport's store. We live in a touristy community with a lot of winter sports. There are summer sports here as well, but the winter appears to be the most lucrative. We planned on things coming together in order to take advantage of the winter sport's season, but our ideal lease space was held up by circumstances beyond our control. We are still not in. Lease space is minimal so we have some decisions to make. We could either delay everything until Fall or get very creative around our marketing for the warmer weather sports and start right away. We chose to open up to the possibility that there must be a way to succeed in the off season. Because we chose to think positively and look for solutions that fit what we want to do, all sorts of ideas started coming to us. We are now positive we have a plan that will succeed. So, the answer really depends on the business and your willingness to open up to new creative ideas around it.[/quote:1209ledj] Hi Tami, I fully agree with your point of view. For instance, when I was doing research on my potential tennis shop idea, the Prince Tennis sales rep I spoke with was telling me how I would need to diversify my product line with more than just "tennis stuff". He suggested that I expand my product offering by also selling other "in-door" sport equipment for things like badminton, squash, volleyball and soccer in order to survive the winter months.


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