Brick and mortars, don't blame us

It’s a pretty common myth that’s going around these days, that old-fashioned mom and pop businesses are getting gobbled up by evil faceless Internet stores that have no retail space or human interaction to add to their overhead. We’re supposed to feel sad and guilty for buying a book from Amazon instead of a neighborhood book-seller. Our nostalgia—or more accurately a nostalgic-sounding delusion—calls us to the idealization of in-person customer service, individualized attention, and knowledgeable shopkeepers.

Now as it happens, I’m a big fan of the in-person retail experience, but the benefits listed above? They are few and far between.

I grew up in a town that didn’t get a Starbucks until five years ago, still has no Borders or Barnes and Noble, and has never had a chain record shop last for more than a couple of years. Not because there was no market for these establishments, but because the market was full of retailers providing excellent products and service. A business model that relies on cheap labor to compete with salespeople armed with expertise is doomed to failure. Even after leaving for college a little hunting in a new town always led me to find the record stores that had people that would suggest music I’d never heard of based on the purchases I made. Oh, you like Klaus Schulze? You have got to check out Conrad Schnitzler.

Over time these sorts of places have been disappearing. A visit to a record store means dealing with cashiers, nothing more. No longer is there any actual service, no longer are there any employees who knew anything about music save what played on mainstream radio. Large chain bookstores and record stores have computer kiosks where customers can search for an item, but only if they already know what they want. Bookstore employees, even at large chains, tend to be somewhat better, but that’s not consistent. I’m not sure I can remember the last time I asked for help at a bookstore and got an answer without a visit to a computer terminal.

With this lack of value-add, what reason is there to visit a brick-and-mortar establishment? Yes, there are exceptions, but the trend is overwhelming. Why is this? The reason is fairly obvious: the management of these stores are under pressure to keep costs down in the short term and therefore tend to hire bodies rather than salespeople.

The A4 problem

I recently wished to obtain some A4-sized paper. It’s uncommon to find ISO sizes of paper in the United States, but I gave it a try. After visiting several office-supply stores and coming up empty-handed, I visited Kelly Paper in San Francisco. Kelly Paper sells nothing but paper, with the possible exception of some inks for commercial printing. Their showroom is impressively large, with a wide variety of papers. These are the paper professionals in San Francisco, and I could not find a salesperson that had heard of A4 or other ISO paper sizes. I can’t fault them for not stocking any, but hiring people that don’t have enough awareness of their product to know that in other countries other sizes of paper are common? Even after explaining that I was looking for international paper sizes, there was no registration of recognition on the faces of the college-aged clerks who were the only help I could get.

Even when stores have staff that knows their product, management has a way of getting in the way of an enriching retail experience. I enjoy my trips to Stylo Fine Pens in San Francisco; the staff there is helpful, interested and experienced with the selection, use and care of their products. I’m stopping short of calling them experts, but they are as close as anyone who wants to buy a pen needs.

Fine pens are, for a great many people, a purchase made on mystique and intrigue alone. There are a few of us out there who care about how pens work enough to pay attention to functional design and materials differences, but for the average pen buyer, it’s about brand and precious metals. Most so-called fine pens sold today are ballpoint or rollerball pens and I can tell you that a $150,000 rollerball uses the same refills as a $250 rollerball and that most $1000 rollerball pens have the same refill that you can find in a $5 rollerball pen. Is there going to be a difference in how they write? None at all. There’s even a hack online for modifying a Montblanc rollerball refill to fit into a commonplace Pilot pen.

Fountain pens are a little bit better in this regard. Gold nibs have different performance characteristics than steel nibs because gold is a softer metal than steel. Different nibs and ink-feed systems change many of the aspects of writing from model to model. In many cases it’s still a matter of personal preference, but there are characteristics of a $100 fountain pen that you can’t find in a $20 pen, as well as characteristics of a $1000 fountain pen that you can’t find for $100.

Whether a customer is looking for a technical distinction or simply the mystique associated with perceived technical distinction, this is a market that requires sales staff to be responsive, perceptive, and to know their wares. I very much appreciate that the sales staff at Stylo are fully capable of excellence in these regards.

Internet migration

Stylo recently started to do business on the Internet. I won’t link to the site while I’m criticizing the business model and decisions of the owner, but they have a website now. I’m sure the owner of Stylo is very pleased with the expansion of his business; there seem to be a lot of people buying from Stylo without ever setting foot in the store.

There is just one problem: the owner didn’t hire a callcenter. Instead, the sales staff on the showroom floor has to field phone orders and questions by email. What was once an excellent retail experience, one worth paying retail prices for, is now a struggle to get the attention of the sales staff who would clearly rather be helping the customers that walk in the front door but who cannot because the phone keeps on ringing.

I’d just let it go at that as an unfortunate management decision, except for one haunting thought: as time goes by, the store owner is going to look at the numbers and see his Internet business expanding as his in-store business dwindles. He’s then going to do the next logical step, which will be to put more resources into developing his virtual presence while being unable to justify allocating resources to his store.

In the meantime, I’ve recently done business with a couple of excellent pen dealers over the Internet. Pam Braun at Oscar Braun Pens is helpful and knowledgeable and has excellent prices. Michael Randall at Cult Pens in the UK has bent over backward to help me find pens I was looking for that are not sold in the United States, and furthermore answered all my questions clearly and made educated suggestions about the pens I might like. Michael was even so kind as to send me a sheet of A4 paper. Granted, it’s the invoice for my order….

Notice that I did link to the above vendors. I recommend them both and hope that my readers go buy lots of stuff from those two. I’m happy to be doing business with people online instead of face-to-face, because that’s where I’ve been getting the best customer service and a premium retail experience. I would provide a link to Stylo, but frankly, I hope that the website customers stop calling, at least during the times when I visit the store.

Does it sadden me that I can’t walk in to a shop and expect to find helpful staff? Yes, of course it does. But no longer can I wring my hands over the demise of retail stores. When they offer me excellent customer service, I’ll be happy to hand them my money. Until then, I don’t want to hear any whining about the Internet killing your business. Hey, if you actually served your customers, if you actually respected your customers enough to hire good people, if you let those good people do their jobs by providing value to your customers…. Well, if you were doing those things you wouldn’t have to whine about online competition, now would you?