Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

So-Lo-Mo and Just Plain O! Grocery Marketing Activity Offers Sea Change Opportunity!

Friday, January 20th, 2012

Social, Location, Mobile and just plain Online access to customers, gives Grocer’s and grocery-brands  a better, more effective and soon to be mandatory manner of communicating.  That communication can seal the loyalty deal, or it can push the shopper into a more fragmented multi-retailer, omni-channel , multi-product world.

 

Today there are many “grocery shopping assist” applications available to the consumer.  List builders, price comparers, deal offer-ers, product locators, healthy substituters, product alternative suggesters and others.

·         In some cases these applications are offered by the retailer (Amazon’s price comparison tool,  Safeway’s feature price match program, Ahold’s Scanit).

·         In other cases the application is retailer agnostic and “customer-centric” (Google, Grocery Saver).

 

Regardless of the application approach used by each consumer, your store and your brand offerings are going to be compared against other choices.  You cannot help but to compete on price.  No grocery shopper wants to have paid more for their milk than their neighbor.

 

However, now is the time when you can chose to make price just part of the value equation which you offer customers rounding it out by including performance.   Bill Bishop refers to this opportunity in a recent blog of his at http://www.brickmeetsclick.com/updating-the-shopper-value-equation/

 

Let me broach two ways to bring performance into the equation allowing you to compete effectively against all current players regardless of their bricks, clicks or omni offering.  These two efforts tie out your communication efforts to your merchandising plans and to the actual condition of the shelf in a performance package that will satisfy your shoppers and that will be unmatched by your competition.

 

1.        Today you put a great deal of intellectual energy and creativity, collaboratively with your trading partner, in order to give your consumers the best possible shelf impression.  That planning, testing and re-planning is followed by tremendous efforts to put the plan into action.   How much time and energy is put into making sure that plan is still in place?

 

ShelfSnap has studied hundreds of products and categories in thousands of stores.   The assortment of products actually on-shelf for the very top brands in the very largest retailers differ from plan by an average of over 20%.   The facings presence on-shelf differed from plan by more than 50%.    The purpose of all that communication mentioned earlier is to drive shoppers to shelf to complete the deal.  When they get to the shelf and do not see products as you had planned them, the deal you were expecting to seal is ripped apart…the customer frustrated and you are just one more brand or store that promises great performance, but doesn’t deliver  on the promise. If you measure and make sure that the very well thought out plan is still on the shelf you will PERFORM 30-70% better than your competitors. 

 

2.       You are investing enormous effort understanding and experimenting with various So-Lo-Mo and O communications techniques and vehicles.  In order to “close the deal” in an online communication the shopper has to connect the product selected from the digital shelf with the one they encounter either on the real shelf or in the delivery tote.  If the product they see on shelf looks different from the product image they chose, or if their product doesn’t show up digitally  they will at least be confused, and in some cases frustrated. According to GS1UK at least half of these shoppers will either refuse to buy or will return the product if delivered.   All early indications from research is that consumers blame the retailer for the product “switch”.   At the very least “decision confusion” increases dwell time which translates into a smaller basket for that retailer.

 

ShelfSnap has matched virtually every source of grocery product images used by manufacturers, retailers and application providers  to products that actually sit on shelves in Walmart, Kroger and other critical retailers.  20% of the products on shelf have no images, or data to support any digital communication efforts, including shelf level health and wellness programs.  Of the products that are on the shelf and that do have images, in 46% of the cases the image is different from the package on the shelf.  When the image is different so too is the nutritional data over 60% of the time.

 

The short message here is take an active role in measuring and managing the matchup between product images in your communications efforts and the product packaging on the shelf.  ShelfSnap makes that matchup relatively painless, and the effort you go to in order to shore up the weakest link in the digital path to purchase will allow your offering to perform more than 50% more effectively than your competitor. 

 

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Why “Storeless” Shopping Surges!

Sunday, January 30th, 2011

More news from the online and mobile shopping front over the last couple of weeks continue to support the notion that the complex world of trying to convince shoppers to become/remain loyal has become a lost cause.  There is plenty of hope to regain loyalty, but more about that later. 

11% of online shoppers made a purchase from their smart phone in the 2010 holiday season, a five-fold increase from 2009!   

A third of all online shoppers accessed retailer sites and shopping applications to compare products or pricing either stand alone, or as they were standing in front of a desired item in a physical store.   

About 35% of all smart phone users have downloaded some sort of bar code reader application meaning, we have just scratched the surface of mobile shopping usage. 

As it expands it will both move out (more users) and down (more categories, more often per user.).   

Last week Amazon announced earnings and a variety of other actions that will accelerate its dominance over the current online environment. 

1.    At $34.7 billion dollars they would be (if Amazon just sold groceries) the 6th largest grocer in North America.  Just below SUPERVALU and far north of Loblaw and Publix.

2.    Their growth rate, despite their size is accelerating not shrinking.  They had the strongest growth since 2000. 3.    Total growth over last year was 40%.  North American growth rate…their most developed market was 46%.  4.    They added 13 distribution centers worldwide last year, an increase of 33%.

5.    They account for over 10% of total online sales in North America.

As importantly, they continue to look for ways to innovate in the shopper loyalty arena.  Their new AmazonTote program allows for direct-to-home delivery of almost all products offered by Amazon, quite an expansion from the AmazonFresh grocery deliver service.  Both are limited to the Seattle area but this clearly represents continued experimentation with loyalty methods to offset what might be perceived as an Amazon disadvantage to retailers with store pickup models.  Sears Holding too offers a delivery model, primarily on Groceries for the moment, called MyGofer in a number of cities.   

All of these alternatives and the results being generated clearly demonstrate that the consumer is ready to be led into a variety of areas as they search for shopping nirvana.  Part of this willingness to be led away from last year’s shopping model and store, stems from early-adopter gadget intrigue.  No question about this as many of the applications are limited in product scope, not all that friendly to use and not connected to other shopping support and shopping applications.    

There is also no question that shoppers are driven to these applications in the hope of finding the ultimate or best deal possible on desired items. Today’s economy drives shoppers to look for the best deals they can get their hands on and the number of applications to help them achieve this goal, continue to explode.  Shoppers feel foolish paying full price for anything and with a little effort and patience the panache of having the coolest thing first, is quickly being replaced by having the coolest thing and paying the lowest price for it.   

All of these things drive shoppers further and further from loyalty schemes except when the loyalty scheme involves price.   As this movement continues to explode combined services will evolve to protect shopper loyalty by providing a package of value wrapped in convenience, that will trade price protection assurances for loyalty on an expanded set of products.  Will it be Amazon that develops this?  Walmart?  Or will it be your local Grocer?  Shopper 5.0, mentioned in earlier blogs (http://brandedpantry.com/2011/01/03/porous-four-store-walls/ ), starts to unravel this potential.

Porous Four Store Walls

Monday, January 3rd, 2011

Situation: A good deal of hoopla, and more than a bit of angst about the significant and growing roll of mobile shopping comparison applications in traditional shopping trips by customers has been on tip of tongue and pen since Black Friday.   

Consumers seem quite willing to use their smartphones to:

Check availability of comparable products

Switch stores, even if the consumer is in one store and finds a better deal for the desired item elsewhere.

Buy the product online while doing the comparison if the item is available at a better deal in an online environment.

It would seem according to Retail Insights that 45% of consumers with smartphones have used them to perform due diligence.    

The CEO of Walmart claims that this is the era of pricing transparency.    Some manufacturers and retailers look at this as an opportunity, others with more than a bit of trepidation.   The retailers looking toward opportunity feel that if they can get the consumer into their store for a “hotter” special, based on a price compare they might be able to move that same consumer into more profitable additional purchases.   It is clear the trick to success in getting the hotter special is not going to be easy to master.  Those with misgivings correctly view this movement as accelerating the demise of retailers who do not have competitive pricing.  Others hope to hang on by either controlling the new technology (both using it to attract shoppers from other stores and to better the offers of other retailers that might sway their consumers) or controlling the environment in the store so that “we will block mobile phone reception in our stores.”    Yeah sure, good luck with that.    Still others hope that their “superior customer service” will win the day.  Not so much, as a study by Accenture indicated that most experienced smartphone shoppers would much prefer staring into their phones rather than chatting with store personnel.  

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Vision:  Mobile adds yet another dimension to the multi-store, multi channel choice game that is developing for consumers.  Electronic coupons, online ordering for a variety of delivery options (online, via mail, store pickup), shopping comparison tools and the like.  All of these developments seem aimed directly at the heart of shopper loyalty to specific retailers, particularly for oft-purchased items.  These applications fly in the face of what retailers had hoped to achieve.  They had hoped to convince shoppers to go to one place to buy everything.

In reality, at least for oft purchased, items consumers want the same thing.   In our view: Customer needs drivers fall into a hierarchy that is definable with a finite number of common variables, but with infinite time and intensity variation.  Some of these are:

1.    Convenience -What I want, when I want/need it.  

2.    At a price I am willing to pay,

3.    Don’t make me work hard to get it. 

4.    Occasionally surprise and delight me with relevance. 

5.    Anticipate my wants and needs

6.    And . . .  don’t do anything that will make me go or look elsewhere. 

We believe, structured appropriately these new technologies can be bundled to help the shopper achieve a new level of loyalty to the retail entity which creates a loyal devotion to meeting these needs for each consumer.    We call the vision around this development Shopper 5.0.  Done well, it could produce more retailer loyalty than anything ever built .

Hurdles: The applications are not yet there.  Nor will all of the potential power of these applications come together in a cohesive model easily.  Finally, the product data necessary to support the necessary applications and comparisons does not exist today, particularly for FMCG products.  Some retailers rely on product differences in order to avoid being directly compared with other retailers, particularly in the electronics and durables arena.  This product information area needs a rework in order to support these new applications. Lots to come in this arena.

Much more on this to come.

 

Why Comply with the Plan?

Tuesday, October 5th, 2010

We have been looking at ShelfSnap Snapogram compliance with Planograms.    We have been working on a project for the Grocery Manufacturer’s Association and Bill Bishop and I wanted to review results from other studies in order to put into context my interpretation the GMA study.

That general review shows that the plan lags the shelf by a margin more significant than common prevailing wisdom.  A much larger margin, and much more often.  

For a moment it might entertain to fast forward beyond the explaination and excuses about why today’s approach produces such paltry results.  Let’s go instead to three avenues that might turn out to be the most logical responses to this new news.

  1. Cost of doing business.  As stated in the last blog, a Midwest company V.P. of sales told us that “we pay for compliance” and somehow making that statement translates words into fact for his company.    We heard another West Coast based V.P. of Sales indicate that he really did not want people in his company to know how far from perfect his broker execution was.    In a third case, a Bentonville based Director of Category Management pointed out that making his client and his company aware of the performance gap would simply generate the demand that he fix the problem.    In short, some view and more importantly accept the performance gap as the reality in doing business today.
  2. A few companies will recognize the opportunity represented by these study results and lead the industry in level setting the store back to their plan.  They understand how big the sales gains will be for them and their trading partners.  The understand that learning how to put new tools such as ShelfSnap to work and then continuously refining to their use of the tool and the tools themselves will lead to a sustainable advantage over the companies that will come to this realization later.  These leader firms recognize that the shelf will drift again, and that the shelf unchecked will return to the wild.  They also recognize that they spend hundreds of millions of dollars planning promotions, new products, new category sets and new shopper marketing efforts.  They spend additional hundreds of millions with their sales force, their brokers and their MSO.  They understand that spending those dollars to a different result is now, just as easy as spending them the way they are being spent today, and it generates a great deal better ROI.
  3. Finally there are a few firms that will look at these findings and re-examine the way they are spending dollars today, looking for a new go-to-shelf strategy that might advantage them more holistically.  They will ask themselves:
    • Why are we spending so many dollars planning if the results at shelf are so different from the plan?
    • Why are we spending so many dollars implementing plans at shelf, if what we implement and what we maintain is so far from the plan itself?
    • Why are we spending so much on shopper insights, segmentation, eye-tracking research, and on creating promotions and marketing around the findings of that research if we are not going to implement the derived plans at shelf.
    • Why don’t we spend less, and differently creating  a business model that deals more effectively with modifying results we find at the shelf in our ShelfSnap measurements.  In this new mode, making modest but real modifications at the shelf, based on prioritized opportunities found at store level may have more of an impact, with far less waste than the model in place today.

We were in the office of a client a year and a half ago discussing some rack designs they had released in a prior quarter on which their product was stocked.  They were proud of some eye-tracking research they had done to figure out exactly where on the rack they should place their most impactful cards to create the greatest profit.  That night we re-examined our Snapogram to planograms comparisons we were to present to them the next morning in order to quantify how often the correct product was stocked in the position specified by the $3 million dollar research study.  We found no single case where the product was stocked closer than a foot from the optimal spot.  Not one case.  That particular client appeared none too concerned about those results as “implementation is someone else’s responsibility.” 

More on the general results in a future blog.  We have released those generalized study results at a webinar for CPG CatNet, and at a talk given this week for the C-Store distributor members of WAM.    The GMA DSD study results have not been compiled in final form and will not be released until their Supply Chain conference in early February.  

Amazing Change!!

Sunday, August 1st, 2010

Back in February I wrote a piece on the rapid adoption of electronic versions of books, available through the Amazon Kindle ( http://brandedpantry.com/2010/02/07/managing-change-that-has-already-happened/ ).  

For those of us embroiled in the physical store world, this kind of sea-change in consumer behavior must seem daunting.  If it doesn’t it should. Over the last thirty days Amazonhas sold 1.8 Kindle books for every 1.0 hard cover book.  Amazing.

If we think this sea-change in consumer behavior is confined to books, or computers, or gift cards, or ………we are mistaken.   There are all kinds of examples (shoes for instance) of categories being both researched and sold online that industry gurus have said would never shift online, that have indeed begun the migration.

Grocery is one of those categories that gurus claim will never have significant penetration from an online sales perspective.  Yet every year the sales of groceries online, continue to march forward both from a same-store y/y and a penetration of total sales (for traditional B&M grocers).

When I ran MyWebGrocer, we had (and still have) the best interface and series of applications in the grocery arena.  

Still, I believe there are steps to take that will significantly and radically impact the consumer reaction to this online channel.   It took the Kindle to move the book market online.  I know there is a “Kindle” waiting to move the grocery market.

Checkout RFID….or Not?

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

RFIDWorld.ca  is predicting the extinction of the bar code and the end of waits in grocery cues because of new less expensive RFID tags.

A component of their aggressive prediction is the announcement of the adoption of tag equipped apparel (jeans mostly) by the world’s largest retailer.   After all whatever those big fellas want….

Another piece of the puzzle is a new technology born through a joint effort of the Suncheon National University and Rice University that can be directly printed onto a paper or plastic tags made of ink laced with carbon nanotubes.

Regardless of the promise of this new RFID development, I am a good deal more excited about the Advantage “Tunnel” Checkout introduced last week in a Hebron,  Kentucky Kroger store.    The objective of this multi-scanner, scale and image verification technology is to eliminate both the shortcomings in current self checkout systems caused by the potential of theft, but also the bottleneck caused by most current self checkout systems.

The Advantage Checkout offers significant plusses in terms of adaptability and control.  For retailers and consumers to benefit only the retailer need commit.  In the case of RFID tags, one of the biggest hurdles has always been that if not all suppliers tag their products, the RFID checkout promise will remain just that.

Its the Facings, St**id!

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010


For a number of years the industry has been trying to deal with the challenge of that “first moment of truth”, the collision between buyer, brand and banner.   We have had all manner of developments and innovations trying to triangulate on that moment in order to make the result of that encounter more predictably successful.  In the end we have improved supply chain elements but had very little impact on the actual shelf conditions encountered by the consumer.

Over the last 20 months ShelfSnap has compiled evidence that there is a lot of white space in the information we see on the supply – demand chain.  That white space is on the shelf, where facings put on a products’ “Sunday Best” to try to convince that browser into a buyer.  ShelfSnap has generated a unique view of that product facing in its natural habitat.

The new information that ShelfSnap provides has been missing since industry players started worrying about out of stocks and other deviations from the category, promotion and shopper marketing plans.  This information provides a clear analysis of what Logistics Viewpoints describes as a void in shelf level collaboration.  It is the only thing not effectively measured by inference engines, POS data, audits and, certainly, not by sign or tag printing programs, i.e., product facings.

The characteristics of those facings we measure include:

  • Permanent or temporary

  • Number

  • Condition (in-stock . . . all of them?)

  • Orientation (is the product putting its best face forward?)

  • Shelf

  • Adjacency

  • Blocking

  • Signage

  • And perhaps, most importantly, comparison to the plan 

Pretty much everything that retail and manufacturer planners want to do revolve around facings.   They plan in order to

-  Add facings.

-  Rearrange facings.

-  Move facings into the line of consumer site.

-  Send consumers in search of them.

-  Promote with facings.

-  And, occasionally cull a particular product facing from the herd.

Which is the chicken and which the egg?  Are the facings allocated based on “sales results” or are the “results” the effect of the facings?

  • 18

    Facings have three natural enemies which are:

    1. The Consumer - Consumers hate seeing holes on the shelf.  Studies have found that they have “helped” by filling in holes with neighboring products.  Or, taken product out of their basket and put it on the shelf.

    2. The Competitor - This one is predictable.  There is a lot of incentive to slide your tag down a slot.  Or, to exchange their position for yours.  Savvy competitors know that facings create sales and that discrepancies from plan are very hard for the human eye-mind combination to sort out when the shelf looks full.

    3. The Caretaker - The caretaker can be the manufacturer’s employee or agent or it can be the aisle personnel.  In these cases the practice of keeping the shelf neat, tight and full can result in a change in facings

       

    All of the changes wrought by these “natural enemies” of the facing go unseen by the planner, and not clear from POS data.  Rather than infer that something has gone awry at the shelf the natural conclusion about the majority of products is that the plan was faulty or that sales are simply sliding.  As a result we can’t honestly determine what’s happening

    What ShelfSnap provides is the only true measure of the facing and with it a clear picture of the factors impacting sales.

  • CAN TIGHT, BUT IS IT RIGHT????

    Friday, July 16th, 2010


    Can Tight, But Is It Right?

     

    Surprising new information about the difficulties and effectiveness of continuity merchandising.

     

    “Can tight” is a familiar term for grocery operators that indicates a shelf is fully ready for a consumer.  Products are fronted, and as fully stocked as available inventory will provide.  Shelves stocked “can tight” are assumed to be set correctly.This practice was identified as being responsible for hiding out-of-stocks, as holes were routinely “faced over”.  It turns out that leaving those holes open might help slightly in combating those out of stocks.  However, what is definitely true is that product that looses shelf space has a difficult time finding its way back.  No amount of standing in front of the shelf divining what might be out of place, short faced, or void is very productive.Staring at a shelf set, thinking about the plan that is supposed to be in place and identifying and understanding the differences from that plan is a tough, tough assignment.  Even with aids such as inference generated “alerts” and no-scan reports the process is frustratingly difficult.  DSR technology frequently generates false positives or, even more frequently, fails to report real issues.  Let’s look at a quick example:

     

    Can Tight

     

    This picture of a modular (viewed through the ShelfSnap application) is what continuity merchandisers face every day.  Merchandisers typically visit 2-5 stores and review 2-15 categories in each store.  Usually, they might have 1-2 tasks to accomplish (cut in an item, build a display) along with checking that the shelves are “can tight and right.”In this case the merchandiser’s eye would naturally be drawn to the out-of-stock in the second position on shelf 1 in the second segment.  It might also be drawn to shelves 1 and 2 in segment three where products could use a good face up.  But the rest of the set “is can tight and looks right”.In this case the continuity merchandiser had all most of the modern tools that could be brought to task including:

     

     

    • Mobility Solution and PDA.
    • DSR fed with POS sales (updated multiple times each hour), a perpetual inventory and “alerts” from a sophisticate inference engine.
    • Shelf-tags with full item detail, in many cases with images of the product that should have been in the slot(s).

    Even with these tools the task of separating the real issues from the false positives is impossible.  The hurdle the merchandiser is facing is simple human physiology.  According to Dr. Wolfe, a Harvard Ophthalmology Professor and chair of the school’s Visual Attention Lab, there are confounding operations needed to complete this comparison which puts a tremendous strain on mere mortals.  One of those hurdles, called the prevalence error, affects the merchandiser in two ways.  First, the eye is drawn toward the obvious issues, the out-of-stock in this case and away from the rest of the shelf.  Further, the brain “expects” to see a “can tight” shelf and once it sees that it has a hard time seeing beyond that fact into the content of the shelf.   In other words the job as defined, given the tools above is impossible to do.So, how far from the planned Modular was this particular set, after the continuity merchandiser left the store?  If we define compliance, as we ought to, in terms of the correct products, in the correct spots with the correct facings, than the average store in this study has been compromised by almost 60%!ShelfSnap carried the investigation a bit further comparing actual compliance in stores that received a normal amount of store servicing, against stores that received an extraordinary amount of additional continuity merchandising staffed by professionals engaged by the manufacturer who dominated the category.  These resources were directed by a mobility solution driven by daily sales information.  After a brief shake out period, where the continuity resources seemed to be having an impact (building off a very non-compliant base), compliance slipped and both level and trend of plan compromise became identical in both panels.  In other works, incremental continuity merchandising by itself had absolutely no impact on plan compliance.   When ShelfSnap added in SnapTask Directed Merchandising, picture based analysis about which products and positions need attention, the results turned positive very dramatically.  How dramatic?  Double digits – a 15% sales increase!

    The SKU Rationalization Pendulum….or Wishful Thinking?

    Monday, March 22nd, 2010

    Bloomberg seized some movement by the world’s largest retailer to add back some SKU’s pared in year old Win-Place-Show program as a sign that the pendulum was swinging back from SKU rationalization.  They quote one head-hunter as indicating that manufacturer’s are stepping up efforts to staff now that they have a seat back at the Bentonville table.  I can hear the cheers from a half dozen CPG sales executives as they hope this will reverse the SKU-Rat programs not only at Wal-Mart, but at Safeway, Kroger, Walgreens, Supervalu and even 7-eleven.   

    Logistics Viewpoint’s Adrian Gonzalez gives a little more guarded view in his March 11 post quoting the retailer’s COO Bill Simon.  Mr. Simon acknowledged at the BOA Merrill Lynch Conference that they were adding back some items to avoid disappointing some consumers.  He indicated that these were anticipated course corrections and that the real reason for Wal-Mart’s traffic declines in the fourth quarter, were much more connected to the severity of shopper disruption from the Project Impact remodels which started in ’09 and will not be complete until 2014.  Major remodels on 15-19% of the fleet each year is bound to have some impact on traffic.  

    All of that cheering reported earlier might well end with Morgan Stanley’s Mark Wiltamuth announcing on the 19th that the world’s largest retailer will dramatically increase grocery promotions over the next six weeks.  He called it a “major setback for U.S. grocers.  Shares of grocers stocks reacted immediately, dropping about 2% in aggregate. 

    Wiltamuth indicated this action was built to address Wal-Mart’s traffic slippage in the fourth quarter.  The pricing will affect 10,000 items primarily Grocery, and it will hit stores by April 1 supported by strong media.  This should impact the Easter traffic.     

    The SKU-Rat programs are not going away, for any of the players.  In Wal-Mart’s case this is simply one leg of a much bigger plan which has been unfolding in bits and pieces for a couple of years.  This promotion focus over the next six weeks will hammer back at the competition which will have a tough time affording to follow along.   

    This is just another example of a lead player willing to lead radical change in the shape of retail.  As Drucker tells us: “to be sure change is painful and risky and above all it requires a great deal of very hard work.  In a period of rapid structural change the only ones who survive are the change leaders.  A goodly proportion of those attempting to make the future will surely not succeed.  But predictably, no one else will.”

    200,000 + 1

    Sunday, February 28th, 2010

    Add another retailer to the roughly 200,000 stores which have closed down since the beginning of the “downturn”. 

    In January, at the FMI Midwinter Executive Conference, Tres Lund CEO of Byerly’s reported to a somber group that 200,000 stores had closed out of a market consisting of about 1.1 million “doors.”  While sobering in its own right, the number becomes a bit more meaningful when it is on your own street. 

    The ShelfSnap offices are located in the bucolic suburb of Libertyville, 30 miles north of Chicago.  Our office is just north of downtown.  The downtown area has been quite vibrant traditionally, with lots of community activities, bustling traffic on Saturday mornings and Friday noon, summer concerts in the downtown park for business owners and town folk alike.  

    Usually, there is one storefront or another that has gone dark at any given point, only to start up a few months later reincarnated as something else.  However over the last 18 months we have seen five shutter their businesses, the latest on this past Saturday.  Only one business has started anew in that time, in one of the empty storefronts.  Thankfully, it is a booming bakery with an impressive inventory.  Hopefully the crowds we see there are enough to keep them in cupcakes (we are certainly doing our part!) 

    The store that announced its “final sale” was a women’s clothing store that I had not noticed much about.  Seemed to be high end inventory, and always had a nice display in the window.  A person was in the store the morning I saw their “final” banners so I wandered in and pretended to look at the sparse inventory.  I asked about the reasons for closure.  She teared up a bit, and then said “parties and banks.”  She said her store always had a loyal customer base due to the quality of her merchandise and the quality of the store’s service.  The downturn had affected the number of parties people were throwing which impacted her sales.  She said that has happened many times over the years, and on each occasion the owners buckled down, find new exciting clothes to entice their customers for other less formal needs and tap their credit to last out the recession.  This time their bank, of 20 years, said “no” and closed their line…..and their way of life. 

    Clearly, there is much we do not know about this little store and the bank that refused to support it.  What we do know is that 4 more people are now in the job market from the store, the suppliers to that store have one less outlet to buy their goods and the customers will have less unique merchandise to select from when the parties return.  Oh, and there is one more darkened store, peering out from main street in Libertyville.  

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