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It’s not that retailing is in a rut — exactly. Rather, the issue is that retailing, just prior to the Christmas selling season, has become dangerously internalized — and socialized.
The talk these days is all about individual companies and the issues that surround them.
Perhaps more ominous, much of the discussion revolves around social issues: Walmart’s seemingly ongoing struggle with its workforce; Walgreens’ battle to integrate its emerging Walgreens-Boots entity with the traditional Chicago-based drug chain; CVS Health’s apparently endless tussle to simultaneously integrate and separate its chain drug and PBM units; Rite Aid’s epic struggle to simultaneously right itself and reassume its position atop the chain drug industry.
The talk goes on with no apparent point other than to make conversation. More than pointless, the discussion has no motive. Retailers care, up to a point. And that point is curiosity, not involvement or envy. The retail community comes to the discussion with no malice if not much goodwill. These trials and tribulations of competitors are of little interest and less concern. Each retailer is saddled with issues of its own, issues that are increasingly taking precedence over the business — one of selling merchandise.
The supplier community, traditionally the place from which the most reliable information emerges, is equally curious — and disinterested. That community’s business is selling merchandise — and as the holiday selling season begins, that business is coming under increasing scrutiny. The problem is that retailers have another agenda — one which they believe is more urgent.
Contrast this attitude with that of Christmases past, when the talk was about mergers and acquisitions; executive appointments and promotions; new stores and formats; new approaches to selling, merchandising and marketing. More specifically, in past years much of the discussion was retailer-generated — and it involved individuals, merchants mostly, who could generate sales and excitement, who could arouse suppliers to new levels of energy, effort and excellence by the simple expedient of enticing customers into their stores with new ways of doing business.
Today, that conversation has been replaced by the impact online retailing will have on store traffic, and how negatively that store traffic will be affected as a result. Also up for discussion is the suddenly emergent “hacking” issue, one that some people believe will compromise shoppers for all time. Further complicating matters is the “online ordering and store retrieval” debate that will have little impact this holiday season, except in the minds of those who believe otherwise.
The list of non-retailing issues is endless. And it is crowding out the usual pre-Christmas speculation about retailing.
Consider: Walmart, over the past few months, has completely altered its approach to its customers, largely subordinating its Supercenters to small stores designed to serve smaller neighborhoods. The thinking behind this reordering is that the customer, influenced by a still-sluggish economy, is reordering her life — and, as a result, she’s now more interested in small stores than mega-stores.
If Walmart is reordering its store priorities, Target is apparently reordering its approach to the customer, the marketplace and the business. Walgreens, meanwhile, is rethinking its priorities, increasingly influenced by the Alliance Boots organization it recently acquired. CVS/pharmacy, under new leadership, is doing its own analysis, as is Rite Aid. Those are only the most obvious examples. Others abound. Combined, they’ve obscured the overriding object of retailing: selling merchandise.
If any of the retailers just mentioned, and countless others, put aside, for the moment, the social upheavals surrounding their businesses and set out to increase sales, that retailer could, overnight, come to dominate the marketplace. Sadly, however, no such initiative appears imminent. Rather, the emphasis is all on the side of wages and health care and hacking and integration and online retailing and new management approaches and new priorities and new store formats.
The result, not yet confirmed, is that Christmas may be a little late this year. If it arrives at all.
