Turning Retail Failures into Success: Lessons from Legends and Real-World Examples

Success

During his Hall of Fame career this NBA legend missed over 9000 shots lost nearly 300 games and 26 times was asked to take the game-winning shot which he missed. In fact he didn’t even make his high school basketball team. He failed and failed and failed again yet Michael Jordan will tell you that those failures were the very reasons why he was so successful.

Winston Churchill is often credited with saying “success is going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”

Why Discuss Failure?

You may be asking why am I talking about failing? I’m really talking about what it takes to be successful.

Retail Challenges

As retailers you are confronted with failure constantly; it goes with the territory. The most obvious example would come from inventory decisions. From time to time you might have too much or too little or you might select the wrong style. The vendor might ship late or not at all the merchandise might not fit correctly or be defective in some other way or perhaps the price is too high. These issues lead to markdowns in most cases. Markdowns stimulate sales and help a store clean up inventory problems. They also reduce margin. Taken in the right quantities and for the right reasons markdowns are a healthy part of the retail business. It is only when markdowns are taken excessively that they become problematic. Markdowns represent mini-failures but if taken properly as already discussed contribute to successful operations.

Employee Issues

Employee issues most certainly can be a source of failures. How many times have you hired someone who you thought would be a good fit for your store only to find out that was not to be the case? On the surface this is clearly a minor setback (aka failure). However if you learned from the experience and went on to find even a better employee the negative experience became a success.

Have you ever signed a bad lease or had a location that didn’t turn out as you expected?

More often than not the next location works out great. Ever run an ad campaign or sale that failed to produce the expected results? If you are paying attention you will learn things during the failures that hopefully help prevent future reoccurrences.

Some of the failures we encounter are within our control while many others are not.

It’s not if you will have failures it’s how you turn them into successes that is important. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

The most successful merchants I have worked with are the ones who have experienced failures and have persevered nonetheless. These retailers have survived bad leases closed stores endured bankruptcy proceedings etc. only to resurface as better stronger merchants. Another common trait among these survivors is that no matter what happens they always seem to maintain enthusiasm for their business.

As you close out this year and prepare for the next try shifting your thinking from negative to positive and see how quickly those failures become successes.

Ritchie Sayner

Ritchie Sayner

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