Jananas

Hearing about the Rogers Video stores made me think about why they closed, outside of obvious issues like the increase in downloading leading to fewer rentals. I have a theory that part of the problem is that the drive towards uniformity fails to take into the account the differences in markets. As much as we want customers to walk into one of our stores anywhere and recognize it, is having the same layout the best way to accomplish this?

Take a video store. If you are in a suburban location, you have lots of space available for less money (relatively). Your store can have wide aisles and the multiple copies of that hot new release displayed side by side. However, if you are in an urban location where space is limited and comes at price premium does this sort of planogram continue to make sense? I’d argue no. In fact, I think that part of the reason why companies have trouble making some stores profitable is because they blindly implement planograms without taking the location into account.

Personally, I don’t know why downtown movie stores have wide aisles; aisles that are in fact wider than those at my local grocery store. Or why they need to display multiple copies of movies side by side – why not have a single display copy and then have the multiples shelved so that only their spines are visible? Yes it would destroy the copy cat training you provide from your employees, but it would allow you the flexibility to remain in the market.

For that matter take this one step further and expand into rural markets (i.e. small non-suburban cities). Why not create a category of video store that offers several (but not thirty) copies of the latest new release, some classics, and the ability to order other movies from the local big store for delivery once a week.

This thought originated from discussions with a friend on planograms, but the underlying issue is I believe is that businesses expand so much that they equate control and standardization to organizational efficiency and proper business planning.