Convention busting – retail

Long held wisdom in the retail industry is that items must be displayed on shelves by category. Idea being that we know what thing we are looking when we shop. But what if we’re just browsing? What if we don’t want anything in particular? Bring on Smiggle – stationary retailer who display their range by color.

Eyeball worthy…. I better go check out what they have in purple.

They aren’t the only ones moving towards it, as  on line retailer etsy also display their range on line by color, with an amazing interface – check it out. It just works.

What other conventions need to be busted in your startup category?

Your phone number

I have my personal mobile number published on the rentoid.com contact page. Crazy? Maybe. Yes I do get the occasional phone call from overseas at 3am – and I answer it bleary eyed, and turn on my laptop to help the rentoid member.

Here’s why I do it:

– I get instant feedback on what we need to do to improve rentoid

– I ask them how they found us

– I tell them things they not not know about rentoid to improve their experience

Importantly, I surprise them with some personal service, from an actual fully fledged web business, which is beyond expectations.

Sometime in business we need to be prepared to be ‘annoyed’ in order to ‘delight’

Startup blog says: Make yourself available.

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