I took the summer off.

I took the summer off.

Actually, it was a forced vacation. I developed the biggest case of writer’s block since…well… since the last guy who suffered writer’s block.

See, still suffering.

While I seemed to have spent most of the summer doing nothing, I recently realized that I had been working.

My affliction with the written word forced me to shut up long enough to actually listen to other people, people who could not have disagreed with me more about the future of retail. Folks who felt that things were just starting to get around to normal. I knew they were wrong, but every time I tried to write about why and how they were wrong, the words simply wouldn’t come.

And for a while, it seemed that they might be right. In the beginning of the summer the economy was improving as judged by the return of the Dow industrials to a post 10,000 level, the moderation in the unemployment figures, and a slight rebound in retail sales.

Big Box retailers had trimmed overhead, meaning that they had stopped hiring replacement workers and that they had let inventory levels fall to disastrously low levels. But prices had stabilized and margins had returned. “See”, they would tell me, “The worst is over and things are going to be just fine”.

I seethed with my inability to contradict them in print.

I choked on every attempt to point out the fallacy of their arguments. I tried and tried to write about the disastrous effects of the decline in service levels and the irreparable harm that comes from sales lost to overly efficient (read non-existent) inventories.

I banged on the keyboard trying to communicate exactly how theses short sighted cost cutting strategies executed by large retailers would simply pave the way for new, innovative retailers to come along and eat the big boys for lunch. But the words would drop out of the computer and turn to absolute drivel (you may argue that this drivel continues, but hey, I gotta blast through this block somehow).

“The numbers”, I was constantly reminded, “simply don’t support your gloom and doom scenarios”.

Maybe, but something is going on that the numbers don’t show. I know it, but as yet I can’t articulate it.

My retreat from the confines of the hovel where I write also allowed me to listen to the voices of customers when they weren’t being customers. Since writers are notoriously unsocial beings, I used my kids as cover and did what all great writers do, I eavesdropped on conversations I had no business listening to.

As I sat by the pool sipping margaritas (ok, so it was the community pool and the margaritas were actually caffeine free Diet Cokes) , I listened to people from all walks of life and in all types of financial situations talking about how they were changing the way they shop and how they pay for those purchases.

Most are done buying on credit, either because they are forced to pay with cash because of their financial situation or because they have vowed not to get into debt of any kind.

Lots had mailed in the keys to their homes and were looking to rent for the foreseeable future.

Everybody was talking about what they were doing to cut back on spending because they didn’t have the money or, more often than not, because they were scared about spending any of the money that they had. Those with money weren’t interested in spending, because they didn’t know how long it would have to last.

Many had given up looking for work and were in the midst of starting a small business. Anything they could get into for as little capital as possible. They were starting landscaping businesses, handy man services, dog grooming, dog sitting and dog walking business. They were selling homemade jewelry at the farmers market, canning vegetables, making home made soaps; you name any small time business operation, and somebody at the pool was starting one.

On the other side of the pool, different people were talking about how they had stopped using their national franchise grass cutting service and had switched to a local guy because his prices were competitive and he showed up when he said he would. Others talked about firing their contractor because they found a great handyman who would take on even the smallest job and who did great work. Still more where raving about the home made products they bought at the farmers market because they were better made and cheaper that what they could get in the stores.

“Hmmmm” I thought. And since I couldn’t bring myself to write a friggin’ word, I was left with thinking and going “Hmmmmm”.

On the sales floor the sentiments were the same. Customers had changed the types of projects they were taking on. Doing just enough to get by and not going whole hog. Repairing instead of replacing, painting instead of remodeling, fixing instead of buying new. Sure, they were spending at a level close to what they had spent in the past, but something was very different. The business was better, but it wasn’t the same kind of business as it had been before the recent “Economic Unpleasantness.”

The numbers were showing that the sales were coming back, but the numbers weren’t showing that the type of business we were now doing wasn’t the same type of business we had done “before”.

The powers that be starting talking about how things were going back to normal and while I couldn’t see that happening, I had to admit that something certainly was happening. What it was wasn’t clear.

I had been expecting to see a new type of retail model rise out of the ashes of the economic collapse. That hasn’t happened…yet. Right now it seems as though the “old” Big Box model is being used by customers in a completely different way

If so, then the question is, can Big Box change to accommodate this new shopping pattern and this new economy or will it turn those customers away unsatisfied. How long will customers put up with limited product offerings and lackluster service regardless of the pricing? How long will lower prices stay and how long will it be enough? A gallon of paint is a gallon of paint, but when it’s purchased by a homeowner rather than a contractor, then it becomes a completely different product.

The dollar sale is the same, but the process of completing that sale successfully is completely different.

As the customers came back into the store this summer, I noticed they needed a good deal of hand holding. The wanted more information from the sales associates, who where virtually non-existent and they were looking for products that we were out of stock on or which we didn’t carry.

Big Box has yet to adjust to these new shopping patterns, right now they are just happy to see more shoppers, they have yet to tune into the changes these shoppers are making. Will Big Box adjust? Can Big Box adjust?

I don’t have the answers, but at least now I think I understand the questions.