O retorno dos independentes

“If we see our products as books and what we compete on price, we lose. If we see our product as an experience, of which books are one piece, then we can compete.”

"Raffaelli distills the resurgence of the indies down to three main points: Community, Curation, and Convening.
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Community: As longtime community stalwarts, bookstores have been at the vanguard of the “buy local” movement, pioneering events such as Small-Business Saturday, and making their customers feel virtuous about spending money in their own neighborhoods. “It’s almost like a social movement,” says Raffaelli, who says indie bookstores are “anchors of authenticity in an ever-increasing digital and disconnected world.” The notion goes beyond a bond with customers to include other important community actors, such as schools, chambers of commerce, and civic organizations, reinforcing the social fabric and engendering a strong sense of customer and community loyalty.
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Curation: Despite the increasing sophistication of online algorithms, online platforms have been unable to replicate the knowledge and passion of indie bookstore employees, says Raffaelli. “Many booksellers are voracious readers and serve as trusted guides who can point their customers to new genres or up-and-coming authors they might not have encountered,” he says. “Customers leave the store excited and then want to come back.” By contrast, he says, Amazon’s reputation as “the everything store” can sometimes work against it, overwhelming consumers with too many options and an impersonal experience.
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Convening: Indie bookstores are increasingly serving as points for convening, expanding beyond author events to host book groups, children’s story hours, birthday parties, music events, knitting circles, culinary demonstrations, and other events. Several stores Raffaelli visited reported staging over 500 events a year. “Bookstores have always been a place where people could convene and have a conversation about the issues of the day,” he says, adding that bookstore owners are increasingly seeing their competition not as Barnes & Noble, but as Netflix and other entertainment apps that tie people to their couches. “Retailers who succeed are able to create a unique experience that consumers see as time well-spent. [Moi ici: Nunca esqueço de Pine e a sua relaação entre experiência e "time weel spent"] Not only do such events get people into the store—the number one goal of every retailer—but events open the door for readers to connect with other bibliophiles, creating more demand for their products.
Ironically, in their efforts to build community, bookstores have increasingly embraced the online world as a tool to extend their reach. “Bookstores have become sophisticated at building a social media presence,” Raffaelli says. “Many owners have hired online specialists to extend the conversation outside the four walls of the bookstore itself.”

Interessante esta ferramenta de avaliação das lojas:

 Fontes:

• Lessons for Retailers from the Rebirth of Indie Bookstores
• Reinventing Retail: The Novel Resurgence of Independent Bookstores

Empreendedores literários

O tema não é novo neste blogue, mas é tão desconhecido no mainstream tuga que toda a divulgação é necessária, o renascer das livrarias independentes, o que o motivo e o que significa para o paradigma económico a que chamo de Mongo.

Escrevo sobre as livrarias independentes, mas apelo à capacidade de abstracção para que se abandone o exemplo concreto das livrarias para agarrar o que há de comum para outras áreas da economia.

Esta semana já devo ter recebido uns 2 ou 3 SMS da Bertrand a tentarem seduzir-me, mas ir lá para quê? Para mais uma vez entrar e sair sem nada que me agarrasse, sempre os mesmos livros e o mesmo tipo de livros...

"the saga of the independent bookstore underwent a major plot twist: The customers came back. Between 2009 and 2015, independent booksellers across America grew by an astounding 35 percent, from 1,651 stores to 2,227, ABA figures show. And the upsurge shows no sign of slowing.
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the genuine social value of traditional neighborhood bookstores and how they’ve changed their own fates.
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The full study won’t be published until next year, but in a newly released overview, Raffaelli notes what he calls the “three C’s” of his findings: community, curation, and convening. Independent bookstores early on embraced the community-oriented “localism” wave that has inspired the proliferation of craft brewers, farmers’ markets, and the like. Small bookstores carefully curate the books they sell to reflect their clientele’s interests and concerns. And in recent years they have repositioned themselves as “intellectual centers,” hosting events and convening people and ideas in shared spaces..
In other words, booksellers have learned to adapt to the vast changes in their own industry.
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“We don’t think of them as booksellers anymore — they’re literary entrepreneurs,” says Raffaelli. “I think that’s an important distinction.”
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“We have a niche,” Egerton says. “The idea is to serve the community.”
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Layte cites the notion of the “third place” — a gathering space beyond home and work. It turns out we need destinations like neighborhood bookstores, she says, “to be full humans.”"

Nada disto é novidade para este blogue... e traduz-se numa expressão que cunhei este ano: o truque é perceber que o papel da livraria não é o de vomitar livros, despachar um output, mas o de ajudar o cliente a arranjar um input que ele vai introduzir na sua vida para atingir um resultado muito pessoal. E isto é voltar ao tema de Ulwick:

"Making the job-to-be-done the unit of analysis means it is the job — not the product, the customer or customer demographics — that is to be studied, dissected and understood. This means that companies should not define customer needs around the product, but should instead define customer needs around getting the job done."

Eventuais dificuldades para o avanço mais rápido deste tipo de abordagem em Portugal:

• falta de massa crítica (pode eventualmente ser minorado ao conjugar livros com outras ofertas "indie booksellers, through word-of-mouth and personal recommendations, can have a big impact on the sales of everything else")
• falta de espírito empreendedor livre, muita gente acha que ganhar dinheiro a vender cultura é algo pecaminoso e tem de ser o Estado a apoiar e subsidiar. Assim, os apoiados e subsidiados vêem o Estado como o seu verdadeiro cliente e nunca chegam a criar a empatia genuína com os clientes-alvo, e raramente o fogo permanece para além do tempo em que ardem os fósforos por falta de skin-in-the-game

Trechos retirados de "Bookstores escape from jaws of irrelevance"

"o que pode desaparecer no futuro não é o trabalho"

Quando as consultoras grandes escrevem sobre o futuro fazem-no, naturalmente, a pensar na comunicação para os seus clientes-alvo.
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Quando li o artigo "industry 4.0 - The new industrial revolution - How Europe will succeed" da consultora Roland Berger, senti o mesmo que ao ler "Robots Will Take Our Jobs".
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Sinto que o tema é abordado pensando na evolução de uma ou duas variáveis, mantendo todas as outras constantes.
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Por exemplo, esta evolução dos robots não pode ela própria contribuir para a democratização da produção?
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Acredito na possibilidade de que o que pode desaparecer no futuro não é o trabalho, é o salário, é o emprego. Um duende, um artesão, um empreendedor não tem salário, não tem emprego, tem uma paixão, tem uma arte, tem trabalho e tem clientes.

independentes e Mongo

E voltamos ao problema da artesã, dos pianos e dos cinemas.
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O que aconteceu às livrarias?
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Por que é que as pessoas iam ás livrarias?
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Para comprar livros!
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O que é que aconteceu a essas pessoas?
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Passaram a comprar online ou nas grandes cadeias.
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Qual a reacção mais comum dos livreiros tornados obsoletos?
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Uma é "Livreiros independentes avançam com providência cautelar contra FNAC e Bertrand", outra é o tradicional choradinho por apoios, subsídios e programas financiados para financiar a "ligação à máquina".
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A reacção tão francesa portuguesa é esta "Vive la Bookstore!"
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O que acontece em Mongo, no Estranhistão? A paixão, a concentração, têm o seu lugar, "Independent bookstores turn a new page on brick-and-mortar retailing":

"Independent bookstores are not dead. In fact, in some of the country’s most urbane and educated communities, they are making a comeback.
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a new category of hybrid reader (the latest mystery, digital; the latest John Irving, print) and savvy retailers such as the Englands, positioning their stores squarely in the buy-local movement and as a respite from screens.
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The American Booksellers Association, which represents independent bookstores, says its membership — it hit a low of 1,600 in 2008 — has grown 6.4 percent in 2013, to 2,022. Sales were up 8 percent in 2012, and those gains have held this year.
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The indie resurgence became publishing’s central narrative this year.
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Twenty-five years ago, independents were supposed to vanish when Waldenbooks showed up in malls. They were supposed to vanish when Borders and Barnes & Noble came along with endless selection and comfy chairs. They were supposed to vanish when Costco started selling the latest Doris Kearns Goodwin . They were supposed to vanish when Amazon perfected low prices and fast shipments — not just for books but even for rowboats, meaning nobody would ever have to leave the house again to shop."

O serviço prestado por estas livrarias independentes já não é o tradicional:

"“This isn’t just a bookstore. It’s more than that.”"

Que outros serviços uma livraria independente pode oferecer?

We will be weird

Regressando ao primeiro postal em que usei a designação "Estranhistão", recupero esta figura do livro "We are all weird" de Seth Godin:

Tudo por causa deste trecho:

"The most-downloaded e-books in the three months were Inferno and titles by self-published authors using Kindle Direct Publishing, including No-One Ever Has Sex On a Tuesday by Tracy Bloom and The Magpies by Mark Edwards."

O que resta da massa compra o Dan Brown, mas o que a massa compra é igualado pelo que as tribos compram.
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Este trecho, também é um sintoma do que se passa:

"As lojas de discos independentes (Moi ici: Não são comandadas centralmente por uns gestores que só lêem folhas de excel e não têm grunhos ignorantes a aturar clientes nas lojas, têm à frente do balcão gente que fala com os clientes e que tem acesso a quem decide a vida da loja. Lojas independentes cheira sempre a David e a estratégias de guerrilha) no Reino Unido registaram um aumento homólogo de 44% nas vendas nos primeiros seis meses do ano, apoiadas sobretudo na venda de álbuns em vinil. (Moi ici: Tribos, tribos, tribos)
De acordo com uma análise da associação de retalhistas do Reino Unido, hoje noticiada pela revista britânica Uncut, a queda de 1,5% no global das lojas contrasta com um aumento expressivo de vendas nas lojas independentes. (Moi ici: Um contraste significativo!!! Este é o sintoma que devia ser o alvo das atenções. É o excêntrico que está a crescer não o mainstream!!!)
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Em 2012, as vendas de vinil em todos os géneros subiram 15% no Reino Unido, o maior avanço desde 2004, revela a associação de retalhistas." (Moi ici: Parece um fenómeno em ascensão)

As forças que nos afastam do século XX (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.
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Mais 3 forças que Krippendorff lista em "Outthink the competition"

"2. Acceleration 
As economies of scale slip away, they are making room for a historic acceleration in the pace of business competition. Cycle times are shortening and the pace of competition is accelerating. Not only can entrepreneurs start companies at a radically lower cost, they can do so at a fraction of the time once required.
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Today conventional wisdom about the time needed for a product launch is being shattered.
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This trend is hitting industry after industry.
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3. Disaggregation
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the era of economies of scale is giving way to what she calls distributed capitalism. (Moi ici: o que já aqui se chamou, democratização da produção, ou indy capitalismo, ou Mongo) In her view, the "myriad ways in which production and consumption increasingly depend on distributed assets, distributed information, and distributed social and management systems" is transforming the nature of business competition. Where factories, distribution channels, and marketing were once concentrated in a few places by a few companies, all of these are now fragmenting into distributed constellations. (Moi ici: os tais milhões de girassóis)
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4. Free Flow of Information 
Information, once controlled by the powerful as a way to maintain their power, is now slipping between their fingers." (Moi ici: o fim da assimetria da informação) 

Tudo a convergir para o desenvolvimento da metáfora de Mongo.

Acerca da dimensão das empresas e da necessidade de crescer a todo o custo

Quando se fala de empresas e de indústrias, algumas imagens de um paradigma vêm à mente de muitos:

São um bom resumo do que foi o século XX.

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São o resultado da colocação em prática de um modelo competitivo descrito por Marx e partilhado por quem escreve artigos onde se lê:

"Marx argued that, for certain technical reasons, value—and therefore profits—can be extracted only from human labor."

Cada vez mais gente partilha a ideia de que o valor não é criado pelos trabalhadores e pelas empresas. O valor é criado, percepcionado, sentido, originado na mente de quem compra. Logo, tudo o que decorre da afirmação de Marx está obsoleto.
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Quando vamos a caminho de Mongo, um planeta "indy", um mundo de diversidade independente, algumas mentes continuam a bajular a ideia das mega-empresas, a ideia do Deus-eficiência. O meu caminho é mais este:

"we can transition to an economy where we work more for ourselves, each other, and in teams. A logical consequence of the financial crisis but also one that could be construed as a silver lining is the rapidly growing rate of self-incorporation. Over one-third of Americans are now registered as self-employed, becoming small businesses in a P2P economy of professional services and retail, or sub-contractors in growing sectors such as healthcare and data collection and analysis. According to McKinsey, the past decade has witnessed a decline in jobs involving transactions and production, while 5 million jobs have been created in interactions that require collective problem-solving or skills matching."

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"3D manufacturing devices that allow small-scale producers to get back in the game of producing everything from household goods to complex mechanical proto-types at ever-lower cost. Rather than a black market, this is a blossoming and efficient digital marketplace for millions of citizens." 

Por tudo isto, acho deslocadas estas críticas à dimensão das PMEs e às suas lideranças em "Ajudar as empresas a crescer".
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Por tudo isto, gostei muito, muito mesmo deste texto "37signals Earns Millions Each Year. Its CEO’s Model? His Cleaning Lady":

"I’m a fan of growing slowly, carefully, methodically, of not getting big just for the sake of getting big. I think that rapid growth is typically of symptom of... there’s a sickness there. There’s a great quote by a guy named Ricardo Semler, author of the book Maverick. He said that only two things grow for the sake of growth: businesses and tumors.
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I take my inspiration from small mom-and-pop businesses that have been around for a long time. There are restaurants all over the place that I like to go to that have been around a long time, 30 years or more, and thinking about that, that’s an incredible run. I don’t know what percentage of tech companies have been around 30 years. The other interesting thing about restaurants is you could have a dozen Italian restaurants in the city and they can all be successful. It’s not like in the tech world, where everyone wants to beat each other up, and there’s one winner. Those are the businesses I find interesting--it could be a dry cleaner, a restaurant, a clothing store. Actually, my cleaning lady, for example, she’s great."

Basta pensar no seguinte desafio:
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Como ganhar mais dinheiro, para pagar melhores salários e remunerar melhor o capital, num mundo em que a oferta agregada supera várias vezes a procura agregada, num mundo em que os recursos são escassos?
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Não é a despejar produção em massa... é a voltar ao artesanato agora na indústria.