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by Adam Zack — January 21, 2016
Raise a Texas whiskey on the rocks to the independent spirit.
The last three days were spent visiting a great client-partner in San Antonio and attending Harold Lloyd’s (*note, Harold is one of the most ardent supermarket supporters, teachers and consultants in America) M4 marketing share group of some of the very best retailers in the U.S. and Canada. The independent spirit to smack down the dirge of the big chains was proudly obvious. While chain stores nervously try and protect their market share against the independents by forbidding photos in their stores and firmly refusing to share ideas and information, our group of 25 independents went into kind of an obvious 007 not-quite-stealth mode. We were kind of like an amnesiatic 007, with Harold clearly disavowing us as he instructed us on how to take photos discreetly. And as much as the big chains are the Goliath to our David, their large bank accounts and competitive desire to annhilate each other results in some pretty darn good ideas that us independents can use for inspiration and improve on.
So we unite as independent bastards. (well, maybe not bastards, but who can’t appreciate the Inglorious Bastards effort against the Nazis? Haven’t seen the movie? If you have an underdog sense of humor or desire to see Brad Pitt be really funny, you gotta see it.) We share ideas with enthusiasm and are almost happier for an idea of ours that works for one of our comrades as well or better than it did for us. It’s very, very comforting to encounter a situation (such as a new, fierce competitor like Whole Foods or Wegman’s coming to your market) and being able to fire off an email to the group asking for help with your strategy and getting more good ideas in 24 hours as responses than you could think of yourself in a year. So as I sit here in the San Antonio airport bar waiting for my flight back home, I raise a Texas whiskey on the rocks to the independent spirit. Long may it live. Support your local independent and viva la Alamo!
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I’d love to hear what the M4 folks would have to say about a Safeway store that just went into an area between what were two of our most profitable stores. It’s all heavy tourist area, the new tourists to Kauai, Hawaii know Safeway (or have heard of them) but not us. The bulk of the customers we’ve lost are tourists so this has been a struggle.