From Random House to Frette, Hästens and Vera Wang — Once a retailer always a retailer
Posted Dec-21-07
If it’s December, then it must be another RETAIL CHRISTMAS SEASON IN NEW YORK!
After 20 years of raising children and pursuing other professional goals, I find myself back in retail. The only difference is that I’m not standing behind a counter, making change, or kneeling down gingerly in stockings and heels to straighten book displays in front of a giant glass store window overlooking Fifth Avenue. Instead, I’m sitting at the computer banging out copy, standing behind a camera photographing stemware, and pouring biodegradable ‘peanuts’into shipping cartons. And of course answering customer emails about sizes, shipping costs, and threadcounts. I’m an e-retailer! It’s exhausting, but I admit it’s great to be back.
Today, Friday, I made my last trip to the Planetarium Station US Post Office, where the lines still wind around to the door, and I wished the Fed Ex Ground delivery workers (including one woman) a happy holiday. FYI here in NYC a trip to the post office does not mean driving; it means strapping packages onto a hand truck and walking. The PO opens at 7:30 and by 8:30 the wait is 30 minutes, by 9 it’s an hour, an experience not for the faint of heart! Thank goodness for online postage and daily pickups.
As a retail bookseller in the 1970′s, I remember posting a giant calendar in the back room of the store and filling in the day’s sales total every night after closing. Every day the number would rise, until the day before Christmas Eve when sales peaked to an always astounding number. By Christmas Eve our hands were dry and cracked from nonstop gift-wrapping, we could count change from any combination of bills and coins, and we’d memorized the sales tax on every subtotal from 95¢ to $62.95 and beyond. (There were books for 99¢ then.) We knew who would want the Robert Ludlum, the Danielle Steel, the latest Library of America compendium, the ‘coffee table’ book on Disney animation. When the front door opened, we smelled roasting chestnuts and heard Salvation Army bells. We shared information with other retailers on the city’s most troublesome (and most tenacious) shoplifters. We locked up every night and went home exhausted, woke up and did it again, until finally, at around noon on Christmas Eve, the crowds diminished and everything became quiet. Every year I promised a champagne toast with my staff but at the end of the season we were always so tired that everyone just wanted to go home. I’d swear that I’d never do another retail Christmas, but I kept at it for another 8 or 9 years.
There were no computers, no online merchants, no Ebay. But essentially, this is still a business about connecting with customers, and the satisfaction that comes from making that connection, from providing great merchandise and customer service, from buyer and seller walking away feeling good about the transaction — well, that really hasn’t changed at all as we’ve gone from brick and mortar to electronic stores.
Happy Holidays, everyone!
