Time to Lift the Lid

Retailers, use this as your chance to break out of business as usual

By Sally Marrer & Rachel Solomon

There is no Corona silver lining. But if you’re searching for bright spots to get you through, consider that this plague has stopped the crazy train that was business as usual for most of us.

Stuck in the box

As consultants, one of the biggest things we bring to the table is the vision that comes from being off the hamster wheel. So much happens with politics inside a business, the pace inside of business, the sameness of the subject matter and with really living inside the walls of a business that makes it incredibly hard for full-time employees to think outside the box. You stop presenting new ideas when you’ve experienced too much red tape around moving an idea forward. You lose some of that realness, that ability to be authentic and say what needs to be said when you’ve been very careful about stepping on toes and navigating insider rules. You also lose some of the customer perspective and an understanding of how the real world reacts. When you’re inside it’s hard to maintain the freshness and awareness of the outside world, even what other businesses are doing across different verticals that’s required to come up with big new ideas. Tailored to reach big goals.

Flex time

Internally, big thinking often falls by the wayside as a luxury retailers can’t afford. Too much is happening in the day to day. Too many KPIs that are immediate, with pressure trickling down from the top. Everything becomes “do right now.” Too often we race from reacting to reacting again. Leaving the little window for acting, thinking it through, iterating, leveraging what we learned the last time, thoughtfulness. But that breakthrough and big picture thinking is a muscle that has to be exercised. All the time. Otherwise we lose it and it can be very hard to exercise it again. Never has there been a better time to flex that muscle. Corona has hit a restart button. There’s a chance right now to do the big picture thinking leaders have put off.

Santa. Baby.

If you are more comfortable starting with something very tangible, how about thinking bigger for holiday? Generally when retailers are fully in the swing of a standard day to day, holiday gets pushed off later than we’d like and the result is that it’s less impactful than it could be. There’s no excuse for not thinking about it earlier this year. And this year it will be weightier than ever with pressure make up for Corona-losses.

What should holiday look like for you?  How can you think big picture, with powerful initiatives like partnerships and custom items you couldn’t activate before because you waited too long?  What can you lock and load early so when the pace picks back up, you’ll have given yourself a breather?

Help others, help yourself

Another good way to start is to think about finding and leveraging any business-unique advantages right now. How about being helpful? We see things like LVDH using its perfume resources to make hand sanitizer and Christian Siriano sewing surgical masks. These acts of kindness are heroic and the right thing to do. After the smoke clears, the public will remember the brands that cared, building the kind of closeness and goodwill we all dream of. Who can forget Dawn donating its product to clean up animals after Exxon Valdez in 1989? We saw the brand (not exactly eco friendly with its high petroleum percentage) in a completely different light. Is there a way you can help small businesses right now?

Get organized

It’s also a good time to do big picture thinking around your organization and how you run it, all the things you haven’t had time to think about when you’ve just been stuck on the wheel. Are leaders in the right positions? Are there strategic moves to be made? It’s also time to think about training. Is there training you’ve never had time to put in place but should? We do a lot of remote training, running through scenarios and more. Is your sales team adept on how to navigate this tricky time and say the right things? Do you have creative leads you believe in but who struggle with their people skills? It's a unique opportunity to provide the kind of training that employees see as a real benefit and that benefits you by stemming churn and making the most of existing staff when hiring may be on hold. Also, are your values clear as a business? Do you have a North Star that everyone’s aware of and rallies around, or have you never quite gotten there? Take a moment to do some virtual sessions on messaging/values/DNA while key stakeholders are available. These sessions are easily done virtually.

Hit restart

And then there is the even bigger picture question: What happens when this is all over? Consider this a massive restart button. What kind of business do you want to be when the rubble has cleared? 

For example, there’s a greater sense of community and camaraderie in the world right now. How can you maintain that after the threat is gone? We’re seeing greater authenticity and transparency among businesses when they message consumers. That honesty deepens the relationship and builds the kind of trust and loyalty every retailer wants. How can we use this time to build greater transparency into ourselves as a business and brand beyond just what’s called for in the present moment?

These are some of the things that we are thinking through with brands in our three-hour “Lift the Lid” strategy sessions. We really relish the chance to help businesses use this time to lift the lid on the box that is “business as usual” and in a targeted, directive brainstorm with a creative/marketing and a business/retail expert, fire up the big picture thinking that’s required right now.

One thing we know is that the landscape will be forever changed. Attempting merely to survive this time and return to business as usual just won’t work. Already we are not the same, and when this is over we will be dramatically different. We’ve both seen that the businesses that will make it into the next phase of where we’re going will be those that look ahead now. 

Want to Lift the Lid with us? In three (virtual) hours we’ll have a strategic, directive session and you’ll walk away with clear right-now moves and big picture projects to survive the new normal and come out changed in meaningful ways. For every one we do, we will donate another to a struggling small business. Email susanne@honorcodecreative.com to set up your session. 

Rachel and Sally met while working at Rue La La. Rachel has been a creative leader inside brands like M.Gemi and Follain. Today she is the CD and founder of Honor Code Creative, working with brands like Asics, Spyce and Tripadvisor. Sally is the owner/founder of Sally Marrer Consulting, which offers businesses strategic advice around business development and coaching on retail expertise and fundamentals to brands like The Company Store and Burlington. Previously, she’s been a trail blazer inside brands like TJMaxx, Marshalls, TKMaxx Europe and Homegoods.