How to lose a retail customer

[workerbee222]

Take over a business that has operated successfully for decades. Let the sales reps go "to save money."
Don't have anyone do the work that sales reps do. Insist you can do it yourself in your spare time while managing the factory (even though you have no experience in either task.
When a "Meet the Makers" event is held to promote various products, don't bother showing up on Day One, at all. Call around noon with your regrets, and say you'll be there tomorrow. (Hint: if you hadn't fired all the sales reps, this is what one would have done. You could have stayed home)

On Day Two of "Meet the Makers" arrive two hours after the store opens. A little later, inform the store staff you're going out to a restaurant for lunch. Store manager informs you that you're here to promote your product, and competing businesses weren't invited so as to give you an advantage. You reluctantly stay.

A little while later, your wife arrives, with your four children. They don't just drop in, say 'hi' and leave, they mill around for an hour visiting Dad.

We provided beer and wine for the customers. Around 4 in the afternoon you start chugging beer. Store closes in late afternoon.

Bonus points: Walk out the door at closing. Call the next workday and ask the store staff to collect and box up your merchandise and ship it back to you.

Be so apathetic about answering emails and returning phone calls that eventually, your retail customer has to say to one of his/her customers, "I know you loved the last ___ we got you from ___. They've become so unreliable that I'm just not ordering merchandise from them any more."

[Pixelated]

The level of ineptitude there ... I am no business manager but even I have more smarts than that.

Sometimes I think something like this must be what happens with some new businesses around here. You see the store, the sign, everything ... but you never actually see the business RUNNING.

Holy crap; I just looked up one of "those" businesses on Google. Here's what I found:

Monday: Open 10 a.m. to 12 a.m.
Tuesday: Closed
Wednesday: Closed
Thursday: Closed
Friday: Closed
Saturday: Closed
Sunday: Closed

[Javarod]

Quoth Pixelated

Holy crap; I just looked up one of "those" businesses on Google. Here's what I found:

Monday: Open 10 a.m. to 12 a.m.

Is that a typo? I mean 12AM is midnight, so that's a 14 hour day.

[Ironclad Alibi]

Quoth Javarod

Is that a typo? I mean 12AM is midnight, so that's a 14 hour day.

That explains why they were closed the rest of the week.

[Javarod]

Quoth Ironclad Alibi

That explains why they were closed the rest of the week.

I swung by a twenty-four hour convenience store, and was surprised to find the owner locking it up. When I said 'I thought you were open twenty-four hours', he replied, 'Yeah, but not in a row.'

[Mental_Mouse]

Quoth Javarod

I swung by a twenty-four hour convenience store, and was surprised to find the owner locking it up. When I said 'I thought you were open twenty-four hours', he replied, 'Yeah, but not in a row.'

There's that old joke: If 7-11 is open 24 hours, why are there locks on the doors?

But re: the OP, back in the day in NYC, the survival of that sort of completely-incompetent business was usually a hint that the store had been taken over (or founded) as a Mafia front for money laundering.

[Nunavut Pants]

Quoth Mental_Mouse

There's that old joke: If 7-11 is open 24 hours, why are there locks on the doors?

The follow-on to that (not sure if it's meant to be a joke or not) --

To keep the armed robbery crime scene "clean" until the cops get there.

[Racket_Man]

Quoth Mental_Mouse

There's that old joke: If 7-11 is open 24 hours, why are there locks on the doors?

.

actually it did not start out to be a joke. back in the day say 1960's and early 1970's 7 = 11 was ONLY open 7am to 11pm. So yes there was a need for locks on the doors. I can't remember when they went 24/7

[SpyOne]

Speaking of odd business hours:

I grew up in a rural town in northeast Connecticut. One of the many services the town would provide is that you could go to the office of the Town Manager and get a map of the town. (just black lines on white paper showing the roads.)

In the 70s as my brothers got into bicycling, they got maps and used highlighters to mark what roads they had ridden on, and in the 80's I did the same.
So when I started driving, I got a new map and marked the roads I had driven on.

Then I went to get maps from adjoining towns.

Now, I always thought the town I was from was a small one (I used to tell folks "most of my neighbors are cows"), but for the town east of us the Town Manager's office was open 9am to noon on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

BEING THE GOVERNMENT isn't a full-time job?

[Ironclad Alibi]

Quoth SpyOne

BEING THE GOVERNMENT isn't a full-time job?

Isn't that the best type of government?