We had a humour card with a small floppy balloon penis on it. Funny card. Customers loved it. Sold consistently.
Then cards started appearing on the display with the balloon missing. We assumed a product fault — attachment not holding, supplier issue, something in the handling. We chased it down. Nothing explained it.
We checked the security footage.
A woman, late seventies or early eighties. She’d come in, browse, wait until no one was close, and snip. Clean off. She’d done it to several cards before we caught on. Came back and did it again after that.
It’s genuinely funny in hindsight. A dedicated, recurring mission to rid the shop of a balloon penis.
It also points to something that isn’t funny. Some customers believe they have standing to decide what a shop carries. Not by choosing not to buy something — that’s their right — but by removing the choice for everyone else. She didn’t want the card there. So she solved the problem herself, repeatedly, with scissors.
We see other versions of this regularly. Customers who complain about products they didn’t buy. Who tell you directly that you shouldn’t stock something because they find it offensive. Who seem genuinely surprised that their discomfort doesn’t automatically override your ranging decisions.
A retail range isn’t built for the most easily offended person in the customer base. It’s built for the whole of it. That card made people laugh and it sold. One person felt differently and handled it with craft supplies.
Stock what your customers want. Not what survives the most conservative person in the shop.
Back to our snipper. We confronted them and asked that they stop it. They complained. We invited them to shop elsewhere.
While our approach may have lost us customers through word of mouth (we certainly heard the complaint had reached others) we felt better for being true to the retailer we see ourselves as, stocking what more customers like and what we can have a laugh about.
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Mark Fletcher founded newsagency software company Tower Systems and is the CEO of newsXpress, a marketing group serving innovative independent retailers, including newsagents, who continuously evolve their businesses to be enjoyable, relevant and successful. You can reach him on mark@newsxpress.com.au or 0418 321 338.