Newsagencies have been built on more than 100 years of formal and informal rules and regulation. Embedded in many newsagency shopfits are rules about what goes where and how it is displayed. Burnt into our brains are rules about how we handle certain product. Supplier representatives, too, have rules they expect us to follow. All because that is how it’s been done.
Many rules and regulations are nonsense and should be tossed out.
Today’s world dictates that we need to operate our businesses based on rules appropriate to our own businesses.
Here’s a tiny example. After Valentine’s Day we had a space Hallmark card unit. Instead of storing it for the next major season, we placed it at the entrance to our women’s magazine aisle with a selection of cards we felt would appeal to the shopper entering that space.
This off-location placement of the card unit gets the cards seen by people not visiting the shop to purchase cards. That action along will drive some incremental business for us.
It’s a rule broken … for the good of our business.
Footnote: this was one of the points of my post earlier this week about the Westpac Bank branch I saw in Auckland.