It's the technology stupid!

In my previous post I promised to stop complaining about the state of retail today, and to outline how I think successful retailers will operate in the future. With the understanding that the future of retail starts…right…now.

Not that anybody in the world of Big Box retail is noticing, they are still perplexed about what’s happening with the economy and obsessed with figuring out when things will go back to “normal”.

NEWSFLASH: This is “normal”.

Okay, so maybe I’ll keep complaining, but that won’t be all I do.

I’m trying to divine what the retail landscape will look like in the very near future. The Big Box format will continue its decline as post economic meltdown consumers look for new ways, and new places, to spend less money.

The Big Box model can’t survive a slow growth economy.

What will survive, and actually thrive, are smaller retailers and regional chains which continue to be profitable in the absence of growth.

These smaller players, without the burden of excessive debt and short term shareholder demands, will continue to gain market share as they capitalize on the opportunities created by changes in consumer attitudes and buying habits. These smaller, smarter retailers will succeed by using tools and techniques developed by the Big Box industry to dramatically shift the market.

One area where smart retailers are gaining a competitive advantage is through the use of appropriate technology.

I’m not talking about using the latest technology, or having technology as the focus of the business, but using those technology tools which make the business more efficient, and which increase the joy a customer finds when buying.

History can show us how to use the best technology out there to improve business processes. One of the things Big Box retailers did very well was to integrate all the different parts of their organizations through the use of technology. The systems, and the best ways to use them, are in evidence everywhere in retail today.

Global sourcing, electronic ordering, supply chain management, assortment maximization and pricing schedules can all be improved thorough the use of readily available hardware and software solutions.

Second and third generation programs, based on propriety systems developed from scratch and at great expense by the Big Box industry, are now available to any size retailer at a fraction of the original costs.

Smart retailers will use these best in class systems and will piggy back on the numerous industry protocols set up to serve the Big Box industry.

Products contain RFID chips to make Wal-Mart happy. Those same chips, and the costs they save for shipping and receiving, are available to any retailer with an RFID reader. Any retailer can use the same inventory control systems as the Big Box stores because they have done the ground work in forcing suppliers to integrate tracking options into their products.

Vendor managed inventory “solutions” now required by large retailers actually allow smaller players to purchase at lower prices. Big Box stores are forcing manufactures to carry extra inventory in forward warehouses. Manufactures are then selling some of the same products to smaller retailers as a way to offset the inventory carry costs thrust on them by their Big Box customers.

This same logic, of using what the Big Box industry built to lower your own costs, exist in automating payroll systems, labor scheduling, training curriculum and inventory management.

It’s just like the Apple commercial states: “there’s an App for that.” The scope of what’s available is immense, it far exceeds the list of what’s needed and there in lies the rub.

Successful retailers will use any and every tool that will help them do a better job, but they will not use a tool simply because it’s there. They will take stock of what’s needed and use only that technology that can make the store run better, lower operating expenses and help delight customers.

On the merchandising side of the business, smart retailers will stay on top of how customers develop and use technology.

They will adapt their stores, their product mix and their service offerings to match how customers want technology integrated with their shopping experience.

Smart retailers will make their stores wifi hotspots. They encourage customers to download information regarding the products they carry. They will let them use smart phones to check offers from competitors. Since the customer will find out how you stack up soon enough, better to have them do it in your store.

By encouraging comparison, it gives retailers the chance to highlight advantages and it gives them instant learning about what the customer thinks is important.

Successful retailers will stay involved in social media. They will use social formats to start conversations on-line about their company. Social media forums allow retailers to answer consumer questions, to respond to complaints and to thank customers for complements.

Successful retailers will use technology as a way to engage customers as well as a way to sell them.

Big Box also created nearly unlimited ways for any retailer to collect any data they want, and then to analyze what was collected. From simple purchase histories to detailed permission based personal preferences, retailers can collect information about customers and even non-customers. Smart retailers know who buys and who doesn’t buy. They use data mining programs to find out what else they might buy. They constantly test strategies and tweak messages to find out what works, and what doesn't.

However, successful retailers also know that information is not he same as knowledge.

Smart retailers will take the information these sophisticated systems can provide and balance it with a little common sense and all the wisdom they can muster. Information based decisions are usually shortsighted and often dead wrong.

Information, put in the proper context, produces knowledge. Collect the information, use the knowledge.

So that’s more than enough about how smart retailers, the ones that succeed in the future, will be dealing with technology. I expect to see more and more, smaller and smaller, retailers adapting Big Box technology as the backbone of their businesses.

Next on the list is a look at how smart retailers maintain a maniacal focus on the customer.

So what's your big idea?

Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!

For months now I have been railing against the unwillingness of Big Box retailers to adjust to the realities of the postconsumer meltdown economy. I have berated them endlessly about their inability to adapt as drastically different consumer attitudes emerge. I have predicted the death of the Big Box Store model because growth, as defined over the last 30 years, is no longer sustainable.

Much of this ranting arises out of the frustration I experience daily on the selling floor of my Big Box employer. I deal with the customers, who to me are actually real people, stressed out about losing their jobs, their homes and their retirement savings.

I stand there helpless as they walk through my store relatively empty handed because my Big Box corporation can only offer low prices.

Today’s consumer is not all that interested in low prices from my Big Box store, they can always get lower prices at the Super Discounters, on line, or at any number of non-retail outlets (think E-bay, the thrift store and Craigs list).

What they want is value, as they, the customer, define it.

They want the right products, at competitive prices, and above all, they want somebody in the store that can help them buy the right products. They want service.

Beyond a few poorly written emails, a couple of badges for my vest and a new advertising campaign, my Big Box Company has not been able to do anything to capitalize on the opportunities offered by this post meltdown world. They talk the talk, but in their panic, they have overdone their commitment to controlling inventory costs, reducing labor expenses and putting short term shareholder gains ahead of long term shareholder value, so they are unable, or unwilling, to walk the walk.

Great!

I’m a super genius because I can see the problems and the disastrous effect they will have on the Big Box industry. I get to wear a great big I TOLD YOU SO !! button in a few years.

The real trick would be to figure out what type of retail model will be successful moving forward. Okay, Here’s goes:

The successful retailer will be focused on organically growing their business over time. They will run their businesses to make their customers happy, while turning a profit and providing meaningful employment.

Notice what’s missing from that definition? There is no mention of “increasing shareholder value”, there is no “Commitment to Excellence”, (who starts a business to be mediocre?), there is no talk of “Employee Empowerment”.

Growth is defined as a result of running the business properly, rather than being the objective for being in business.

The overarching objective is to make money while making the customer happy. Not just focusing on the customer, or giving the customer what they want, but in making them happy. Delighting the customer rather than servicing them.

Employees are granted access to a meaningful job, as the employee defines it. This of course assumes they want a meaningful job. If they just want a paycheck, then Micky Dees is always hiring, so you don’t need to bother with them. Successful retailers will work hard to find the right employees, train them continuously and compensate them competitively.

The successful retailer will be:

ð Committed to utilizing appropriate technology

ð Manically Customer focused

ð Employee engaged

ð Community centered

ð Sustainably operated

Each of these points is a critical component of what I think a successful retailer must do and I intend on pontificating about each of them in detail over the next few weeks.

Stay tuned!

“HELP!!!” “I’ve been EMPOWERED and I can’t get up!!!”

The Big Box retailer I work for recently held their annual Pow Wow to celebrate what the company achieved in 2009 and to unveil their big plans for the rest of 2010.

Big Box retail loves to develop detailed plans, rolled out with theatrical flare and ambiguous nomenclature.

These plans are normally based on incorrect assumptions, flawed conjecture and a lot of information with no knowledge. They are therefore grossly inadequate at helping associates manage their day to day struggles.

The speed at which business changes means that any plan, especially the ones that are grand in nature and extremely detailed, are out of touch with the realities in the store before the first PowerPoint slide splashes on the 100 foot plasma screen.

But no matter.

Since these plans look good in the annual report or in the boardroom, they are followed to the letter by managers who don’t understand them, but who are too frightened to question them.

All of my senior management was at the meeting. Everyone from the store mangers on up. Some 2,000 people crammed into a giant conference room in the bowels of a random humongous casino in Las Vegas.

I can’t help pointing out that a Las Vegas casino is the perfect allegorical setting for introduction of the company’s 2010 plans.

Given the fact that the current business environment is completely unstable, what the company is actually doing is placing a huge bet on whatever plans they have dreamed up in the Ivory tower.

Just like in Vegas, the odds are not in the bettor’s favor.

I was not in attendance at the annual meeting so I have no first hand knowledge about what the company is actually planning to have us lowly hourly associates do. The information I have gotten so far consists of a nearly incomprehensible memo from my store management and whatever snippets I can glean off the employee website.

I am left alone to read the corporate tea leaves and try to divine what I am supposed to do in 2010 to contribute to my company’s success. Here’s what I think I have figured out so far:

· I am supposed to participate in a Service and Sales Offensive. I am to provide service, and the sales will follow. I am not sure, but I think I am supposed to provide that service in an offensive manner.

· I am supposed to stop making it so difficult for the customer to make a purchase.

· I am supposed to get rid of bad habits. (I’ll start by not eating ice cream right before I go to bed).

· Wait, page three of the memo says I am expected to have a focus on sales. Maybe I am supposed to focus on the sales that don’t occur following my offensive service?

· I am supposed to do things differently because change is good.

· I am supposed to buy into what the company is trying to accomplish.

· I am supposed to have a positive attitude about the changes I am making and whatever it is I am buying into.

To help me understand the steps I am supposed to take to help the company achieve its objectives for 2010, I have been given some interesting facts that provide support for the steps I am taking.

• 37% of customers shop in my store and purchase elsewhere. (I think I am supposed to be happy about the 63% of customers who buy in my store or maybe I am supposed to ignore them and focus on the 37% who are going somewhere else.)
• Customers like clean restrooms
• Customers don’t care about selection and price anymore; they are looking for better service. So we are expanding the products we carry and lowering the prices on hundreds of items across the store, while limiting future hiring to part time staff only.
• Customers want someone to listen to them. (I think I am supposed to find my customers other customers to talk to).
• Customers have high expectations about everything.

Well, one thing is perfectly clear, I have no idea what the company’s objectives are for 2010 and I have no clue as to what resources I have been given to help the company achieve those unknown objectives. I know that I am supposed to make changes regarding how I do my job, but I have no idea what those changes are supposed to be.

But that isn’t the worst part….not by a long shot.

I’m not sure, the signals from the company are still fuzzy, but if I am not mistaken, I think I have been “EMPOWERED”!!!

Telling your employees that they are EMPOWERED is just another way of way of telling employees; “Sorry, you are all on your own!”

If you are EMPOWERED you are allowed to do anything to make the customer happy…except for the things you are not allowed to do.

Being EMPOWERED as an associate is kind of like being a dog wearing a shock collar hooked up to an invisible electric fence.

Like the dog, you can’t see exactly where the boundaries are, the fence being invisible and all, so the only way to know how far you are allowed to go is to wander around until you get a painful, bone jarring electrical shock.

But unlike the dog, the EMPOWERED associate’s boundaries are constantly changing. One day you are allowed to offer a customer free shipping to meet a competitors offer and the next day ZZZZIIIZZZS, you are reprimanded for offering a customer free shipping to meet a competitors offer.

For three weeks you re-arrange your hours to better service customers and then one day, ZZZZAAAAPPPP!!!! you find that you are forbidden to work anything other than you written schedule without three days notice and the signatures of corporate management four steps up the corporate ladder. Since you have violated policy three times, you are informed that the next time it happens you’re fired.

After a while you become even more like the dog who, after being shocked enough, just sits on the porch all day. It’s better to stand around and do nothing than to try to do something, which means perhaps risking your job. Maybe you’ll get fired, you don’t know, and that’s the point. Being EMPOWERED actually increases an associate’s powerlessness by filling them with a form of job loss paralysis.

Being EMPOWERED means that you can not be successful. If you don’t break the rules to help a customer you are subject to dismissal, but if you break the rules to help a customer you are subject to dismissal.

Heads you loose, tails you loose.

Vegas would love to have its gamblers EMPOWRED. The odds are not just in the houses favor…there are actually no odds at all. The gambler (or the associate) looses 100% of the time.

Being EMPOWERED is another symptom of the demise of big box retail.

Empowerment is just another way of the corporation saying:

“Hey, we have absolutely no idea of what to do. We can’t come up with anything better so why don’t you guys at the bottom of the pay scale just take your best shot? Maybe it’ll work?”

Big Box retail loves to talk about how empowerment helps associates by giving them more control over their day to day activities. Big Box raves about how associates love the fact that they can take “ownership” in the company’s future success and how much better it is for management to have loads of EMPOWERED associates running around the store, since EMPOWERED associates can practically mange themselves.

Really?

I love not knowing what the rules are day to day?

I love not knowing if something I did (or didn’t do) two weeks ago is finally going to come to the attention of somebody who thinks my actions were reckless and I am shown the door?

I love “owning the store” while being paid in a year what my CEO makes in a day and a half?

If I have so much power, then where is my compensation for wielding that power?

If I, as an hourly associate, am EMPOWERED to take control of how my store operates and how the company’s customers are serviced, then why don’t I get the paycheck that the people who used to have that responsibility got?

Seriously, where is my money?

Last year, one of the worst in the company’s history, the top five executives of my big box retailer received salary and stock totaling $101.3 million. They averaged $2,026,000 which is exactly 65 times my annual take. The top dog took in $3.84 million which tops what my EMPOWERED ass got by 120 times!

The way I see it, being EMPOWERED is just another way for me to take on duties that used to rest with mangers up the food chain. Ok, then why not pay me some of what they got now that I am doing some of their job?

Like I said, the information trickling out of the corporate brain trust regarding what associates are supposed to do in 2010 is still sketchy.

Additionally we are into the second month of 2010 and we still don’t know what raises, if any, we may be getting.

Is it too much to hope that somehow the new responsibilities for associates are aligned with increased compensation for taking on those new responsibilities?

Probably.

If I have been EMPOWERED, then God help me! I don’t know how I’ll find the strength to do my job while shouldering the burden of the company’s 2010 plans.

Maybe the company will give me a button that says, “don’t bother me…I’m EMPOWERED!”

Finally!

The news is starting to come out about how the recent “Economic Unpleasantness” has changed the consumer. Not just slightly altered, but fundamentally changed.

A recent article in Entrepreneur by Kim T. Gordon highlights a new study identifying new shopping attitudes and new buying habits.

It’s about time.

Anyone who works in retail and who pays attention (which automatically eliminates many in management) has known that the consumer has changed for over a year.

People are focused on value, they want to know how a purchase will enhance their lives, how it will create more for them rather than just give them more to have. Outside of commodities, the lowest price is being compared to performance or expectations of performance in an attempt to determine value. If all you offer is low price, then you automatically become a commodity.

So with people being smarter about how they spend, big box retailers have reacted by being dumber about how they sell.

Prices in my store have been going up and down like ping pong balls. I have one item which will fluctuate in price from 58 cents to 68 cents and then to 78 cents, and then stair step back down again…all in the same week. Prices have been changing, both going up and going down, on hundreds of items in my store on a daily basis. There’s no rational behind these price changes, just a knee jerk reaction from some knee high jerk in corporate.

How do you establish any type of value proposition with a customer if your prices are continually changing?

And don’t think customers don’t notice. They bring the changes to my attention every day.

When it comes to a home improvement purchase of any size or complexity, consumers will visit the store multiple times. Each time they come in the price has changed and it generates confusion and doubt that makes closing a sale nearly impossible.

Not that closing a sale is all that high on the big box retail “To Do” list. We have cut labor to the bone so that rather than spending time with customers developing the trust and confidence necessary to help them buy, we have given up selling to be able to provide better “Customer Service”.

“Customer Service” is all about cleaning the store, re-painting shelves, and moving product displays for the 19^th time. “Customer Service” is about checking things off of a work list rather than helping customers buy anything.

Not that there is anything in the store for them to buy. The other big box retail reaction to these new consumer attitudes is to reduce inventory in the store to keep costs (but not always prices) lower.

So in direct contradiction to what the experts in the press are saying: Another important tip is to be visible when customers are ready to buy what you offer, we have almost no significant quantity of any thing in the store.

In our business, there is something called “job lot quantities”. If you don’t have enough inventory of something for the customer to complete the entire project, then you don’t get to sell any part of the project. So if you are short a few $1.25 flooring tiles, then you loose the entire $2,000 tile flooring project. So the few dollars we save by having less $1.25 floor tiles in inventory lost us $2,000 in sales. A loss that will not show up on any report on the knee high desk of some corporate pricing coordinator.

As the article in Entrepreneur concludes: No matter your target audience, whether male or female and across almost every income level, one thing is clear--the recession has created a new normal for American consumers, and there's no turning back the clock.

I sure hope someone in corporate is reading, I actually hope they can read, because they have stopped listening to us in the store and if they don’t figure this new consumer out soon, it will be grim days for big box indeed.

Black Friday from the inside

I just survived another “Black Friday”, except at my store, it was not a one day event.

Sales started the week prior and lasted until the end of this week. Things started earlier this year due to the pressure placed on us to hit higher sales numbers in the middle of the largest economic decline since 1934.

We didn’t get any extra help trying to hit those numbers, in fact inventory was lower this year and there were far fewer employees in the store. Making more with less sounds great in the boardroom, but it looks like hell on the sales floor.

To achieve more sales, with less stuff to sell and less people selling it, management dramatically increased the number of motivational e-mails sent to employees. Nothing overcomes a severe lack of resources like a well worded, even if not properly spelled, e-mail.

Drawing on sports analogies seems to be a favorite among the managers in my store. This weekend was called the “Supper Bowl of Sales” weekend. I think they meant Super Bowl, but let’s not quibble while we motivate. In keeping with the football theme, we were supposed to drive for the goal line and execute with a fever. We needed to pay attention to the basics of blocking and tackling while trying to hit home runs in terms of customer service.

Mixed metaphors must be some sort of subliminal motivational tool.

In addition to heaping piles of steaming motivation, we were fed some key statistics to help us visualize our success. This year’s goal was compared with last year’s results and more than a few exclamation points were used to urge us towards hitting our increased sales benchmark; in an economy where we are trending down 25%.

Do the folks at the top really think that if they click their heels together three times and dream of improved profits that the numbers they need to hit will magically appear? Where is the thought and the analysis that generates this type of unrealism?

And I am not alone, almost 30 million people worked behind the counters and in the aisles selling this weekend. Because of the pressure to hit sales numbers in a recession, those workers were asked to serve more customers, with less help and less inventory than ever before.

So how does a multi-billion dollar retailer plan to hit higher sales goals during the worst economic period in the last half century?

By doing exactly the same things they have done for the past 30 years and hoping for a different outcome.

Not only did they go into this crucial sales period with the same strategy, they actually tried to sell the same products, at the same prices, as they did last year. In fact we pulled down items that had been in the racks since last Black Friday to sell this Black Friday.

Only in big box retail could anyone get away with selling the same old products, at the same old prices, in the sale old way… but with less people and less inventory… and get senior executives, shareholders and board members to agree that maybe, just maybe, something good will happen. In a real business, this type of linear group think would get you laughed out the door. But the goal of managers in big box is not to do anything exceptional, but to do what others before them have done so you will have a plausible excuse for failure.

With so much money riding on this annual event, and the same 30 year old approach, you would think that we in the business would be better organized.

We’re not.

Inventory for the big event comes into the store starting in September. It is placed anywhere in the store where it will fit in the racks high above the selling floor. It will be taken down, and put back up no less than 7 times as various members of store management contradict each other regarding the proper placement of the product on the floor and the correct date that the product should be offered for sale to the public.

By the time the shoppers arrive, the displays have been moved so many times that they look like they have been dragged from China rather than brought by cargo ship.

Each product display comes with specific instructions about where in the store it should be placed and exactly how it should be presented to the customer. The problem is that no two managers in the store can agree on what the specific instructions say or what they mean. So round and round the product goes. In the end, it winds up being a better business decision to chuck the whole pile into the dumpster and save the labor costs.

The night before Thanksgiving we spent hours getting product properly priced and moving it yet again. This all because a manager that had been out sick when the other managers put in their two cents worth needed to feel like she was helping. She was also upset that she didn’t get a chance to send us a motivational e-mail.

The store opened on Black Friday at 6:00 am and not a soul came shopping until noon.

This was my third Black Friday at the same big box home improvement store. Sales in my store and across the district were down for the day. Our store, which is the strongest in the district, saw the weekend matching results from last year while the rest of the district never came close. Friday was slower, but Saturday, Sunday and surprisingly Monday picked up, saving sales for the weekend.

But that’s just sales.

Margin was in the tank. I know shoppers cherry pick the deals, but this year they were relentless. Nothing that wasn’t a significant discount from the “normal” price moved. There were no tie-in sales, no increase in impulse sales and no biting on seasonal in and out items.

In my 25 years at retail, I have never seen the shopper reacting so intelligently to the “deals” we offered. They knew exactly what they wanted to buy and they bought those items and only those items. I had customers calling in a week before asking what our inventory was and checking prices, they did their homework and stayed disciplined.

Traffic up, sales flat and margin below break even; tough way to make your quarterly numbers for Wall Street.

Management’s reaction?

Continue to cut labor costs by not hiring seasonal help and scheduling less hours for full timers. Ironically, the only thing that may have helped the margin was the lack of inventory on many items. You don’t lose money on stuff you don’t sell.

So imagine the morale of the staff as they faced the busiest weekend of the year with less people, while being forced to deal with angry customers who are looking for items that we don’t have. Not only did the weekend hurt the bottom line, we built up a ton of bad blood with customers.

This event was followed, almost by rote, with more motivational e-mails thanking employees for going above and beyond. No reward beyond digital pats on the back, no increase in the hours you are allowed to work and certainly no increase in pay for doing more with less.

Next come the motivational e-mails reminding us that we have less than 30 days to go in the calendar year and that our unused vacation days expire by the end of said year. The “motivation” here is the fact that we can’t actually do anything about unused vacation days now, because the company requires 30 days notice of vacation requests. Keeping all that vacation pay in the company till is a great idea, unless you are the employee who looses his paid vacation.

So thanks for all your extra work during the big “Supper Bowl” of sales and don’t forget that we are taking away those pesky vacation days you didn’t use.

Talk about adding insult to injury!

More Big Box Blues

I know my ranting about the pending demise of the big box retail format sounds crazy, but the facts are getting harder and harder to ignore.

The National Retail Federation just released the preliminary results of a survey where 8,500 respondents where asked about the customer service provided by retailers.

The retailer with the best service? Amazon. In fact, 7 of the top ten retailers don’t even have stores.

Details, such as they are, are here:

http://www.thestreet.com/story/10627227/1/amazon-kohls-top-for-customer-service.html?cm_ven=GOOGLEFI

None of the top ten are big box stores and I don’t yet know where they fall on the list, the full results won’t be released until January.

So just how important is customer service?

The top two retailers on the list, Amazon and Kohls, both posted great third quarter results in what may be the worst retail environment of the modern era. Amazon had a 69% increase in profits while sales rose 28%. Kohls posted a 20% increase third quarter profits and a 2.4% increase in same store sales.

Meanwhile, back in the big box, Lowe’s saw a 30% decrease in profits, Home depot was down 8.9%, Target held on with an 18% gain and Wal-Mart answered back by pledging to cut prices, yet gain, on 60 hot selling items for the holidays.

Holidays which, by the way, have started even earlier than ever. Black Friday sales started this week, a week before Black Friday, in Wal-Mart and Sears. Other big boxers are expected to follow suit.

What will the effect of this increase in price cutting have on future earnings? We’ll have to wait and see, but it just can’t be good.

KKR takes Dollar General public and I feel validated!

Just once I’d like to be right and rich!

Late last month I highlighted the growth of the “Super Discounters” and noted that one of the largest, Dollar General, had been taken private by KKR.

Well, this Friday Dollar General is slated to go public again and the buzz behind the offering is strong. The details are in this WSJ article titled: Dollar General Dresses Up for Its Debut, Deal is one of the year’s signature IPOs

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125772559135637369.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_markets

Naturally, I agree with the WSJ’s assessment when they agree with me.

I think they got it right when they talk about the company’s upside potential. But I had to laugh when an analyst stated in the article that he thinks consumers who traded down to the Super Discounters will return to shopping at Wal-Mart once the economy begins improving. His rational was "we contend that when consumers have more money in their pockets, they are less likely to shop in those channels (meaning stores like Dollar General) because the experience isn't as pleasant as in more moderate and higher-priced channels”.

Really??

The shopping experience is pleasant at Wal-Mart?

I’ve shopped Dollar General and I can tell you personally that it beats the stuffing out of shopping at a Big Box.

The store is easy to navigate, not dirty or run down, and it has everything you usually need for cheap. While not a day at the beach, the experience of shopping in a Dollar General was way better than at Wal-Mart if for no other reason than it saved me a half hour of wandering. I got what I needed and got out, with no one in line in front of me.

If you believe in the wisdom of “following the money”, then you have to take note that KKR is going public with Dollar General. Combined with the other factors affecting consumer behavior during this recession, the growth of this model of retail is a big reason why I think the days are numbered for your typical big box outlet.

The guys at KKR guys are very rich, because they are most often right.

Now, where’s my payday?