"recovery from the coronavirus crisis will instead require "discontinuous transformation""

Outro interessante artigo do Financial Times do passado dia 15 de Junho, "When business survival is at stake, it pays to have a discontinuity plan":

"So for many business and industries, recovery from the coronavirus crisis will instead require "discontinuous transformation" — a change not just in the rate but also the direction of travel, and not through mere incremental moves. Such radical reassessment of capabilities, operations and even the business model itself could become a routine necessity. 

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Finance plays a key role in this type of rethinking and reorientation. Traditional forecasting methods and return on investment (ROI) benchmarks may need re-evaluation. The types of linear progress that finance managers have historically sought will become obsolete at many companies because of the economic disruption caused by coronavirus. 

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First, transformation can occur without large capital expenditures —indeed, new capital will not help if the approach is wrong to begin with. The trajectory of change is difficult to discern at the start, and becomes clear only as the journey unfolds. 

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By committing large sums up front, before the steps required are apparent, management creates a risk of significant waste; if backtracking is needed, there will be heavy capital loss as well as delay to factor in. Paradoxically, slower spending speeds up change: to borrow the US Navy Seals' saying: "slow is smooth, and smooth is fast."

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Third, executives should not underestimate what they can do with savings in times of discontinuous transformation. Big cost reductions can flow from dismantling an existing business in favour of a new model. Liquidity will surely be a big issue for financial managers as they navigate a recovery from the economic impact of coronavirus, so such savings could be a lifeline for many companies. Finally, and on the other side of the ledger, liquidity can also be protected by not prematurely dismantling existing revenue streams that can help fund the transformation. The key is to tap these sources while not allowing them to impede progress by providing a false sense of security. 

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This is not the only cultural shift that leaders need to assimilate. Traditional hierarchies and routines loosen during discontinuous transformation, with employees becoming empowered to think and act in new ways, and new types of collaboration across functions and teams emerging.

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While hierarchy serves a valid corporate purpose, that of ensuring accountability, it can also stifle creativity if it is too rigid. As companies emerge into the new economic landscape that coronavirus has given rise to, the capacity for creativity will be more valuable than ever. In an era of discontinuity, "business as usual" is a high-risk proposition." 

As empresas supostamente protegidas pelo lay-off terão alguma motivação para testar estas descontinuidades? Os zombies não são conhecidos por rasgos estratégicos.

As disguised blessings não são oferecidas, são conquistadas, são desenhadas.

nbnbnb

"Coronavirus has changed both the content of finance courses and the way it is delivered

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Most important, in just two days, Prof Guilhon oversaw a switch to “remote learning” — involving extensive interaction and contact, and going far beyond passive viewing of lessons shifted online because of social distancing restrictions. “Our speakers were connected to students, and we asked faculty to act as coaches,” she says.

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Now, finance course directors are turning their attention to the coming academic year against a continued backdrop of uncertainty."

Trechos retirados de "Schools adjust to a new way of working"

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Trechos retirados de "Online Learning Is Thriving"

"we wouldn’t consistently choose efficiency over effectiveness"

"Most efforts at becoming customer-centric are well intentioned. Most people charged with implementing such initiatives are doing the best they can. The underlying reasons that most companies aren’t close to being customer-centric are varied. 

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Yet all too often the reason comes down to this: we are only pretending to care. Because if we really cared, we wouldn’t consistently choose efficiency over effectiveness.
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Many problems rest in basic survey design and structure. We may be measuring our performance against what we have predetermined are important purchasing variables that may have once been valid but no longer are. We may be talking only to current customers, when more relevant insights could come from listening to lapsed customers and/or prospects.
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once we understand that people buy the story before they buy the product, we have to expand our view of what goes into a purchase decision. It’s rarely all about the product or customers simply trading off price against functional features and benefits.
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The second challenge of historical approaches is limiting our view of the people (individually and collectively) who need to be considered and enrolled in our efforts to drive remarkable results. Clearly a laser focus on our target consumers is critically important. Yet the journey to remarkable requires a broader system of people (those who work for us, with us, are connected to us), processes, practices, technology, and so on that must be engaged to drive the outcomes we desire."

Aquele "we wouldn’t consistently choose efficiency over effectiveness" fez-me logo recordar disto:

Trechos retirados do capítulo 13 "Essential #2: Human-Centered" de Remarkable Retail.

"a ‘disguised blessing’"

O Financial Times de ontem trazia uma série de artigos muito interessantes. 

Um exemplo é "Why this crisis is a ‘disguised blessing’":

"Mr Seto chooses his words carefully, but since Japan went into lockdown in April, he has evolved a contentious idea: that the pandemic, for all its misery, is a “disguised blessing” — not just for Lixil, but for the parts of corporate Japan that realise they can use this moment to make changes that would otherwise never happen. In the right hands, he says, it will accelerate a long overdue transformation of the way work is measured, and the way that information and ideas are transmitted within Japanese companies." [Moi ici: Com Stephen Covey aprendi que não é o que nos acontece que conta, mas o que fazemos com o que nos acontece. Assim, para qualquer evento devemos sempre partir do princípio que pode ser uma oportunidade. Há apenas que procurar o melhor ângulo. Não podemos evitar, não podemos fugir do evento: o que é que podemos fazer para o tornar numa fonte de oportunidades?]

Este trecho também é interessante e foi abordado no almoço de ontem com o meu parceiro das conversas oxigenadoras:

"“We management tend to be very spoiled,” he says. “I used to get information from US general managers that was pretty much sugared and filtered all the time. Sometimes, what I want to know is unfiltered information.”"

Fugirás da competição pelo preço

"Em termos operacionais, a empresa faz o mesmo?

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O tipo de produtos, sim. A forma como a vemos no futuro e definimos a estratégia é diferente. Não queremos ser mais um fabricante de quinadoras e de guilhotinas, mas reconhecidos internacionalmente pela competitividade, fiabilidade e diferenciação das soluções de engenharia para o “metal forming”. Não queremos, como a concorrência turca, vender produto. Em vez de querer a máquina X ou Y, o cliente diz-nos o problema ou a necessidade e identificamos a melhor solução, que poderá ser algo customizado e incluir robótica. [Moi ici: Algo na óptica de "Think “outcome before output”"]

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Não o fazia antes da compra?

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Havia desenvolvimento de novos produtos, mas a SC e eu decidimos apostar numa estratégia, quer de fabrico quer comercial, orientada para o desenvolvimento de soluções. Não só na parte de engenharia, mas também nas vendas e no marketing. Essa tem sido a maior aposta: mudar a forma como vendemos e como os clientes nos veem.

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Não o fazia antes da compra?

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Havia desenvolvimento de novos produtos, mas a SC e eu decidimos apostar numa estratégia, quer de fabrico quer comercial, orientada para o desenvolvimento de soluções. Não só na parte de engenharia, mas também nas vendas e no marketing. Essa tem sido a maior aposta: mudar a forma como vendemos e como os clientes nos veem."

Confesso que me estão a surpreender. A mentalidade Sonae dá-se mal quando o negócio não é a competição pelo preço.

Trechos retirados de “Não queremos ser mais um fabricante de máquinas”, publicado no Jornal de Negócios de ontem.

The Walking Dead e o activismo político

Governos, empresas grandes e "crony capitalism" 

"There’s an important risk in what I call the “bailout of everything,” or the conscious decision from governments and central banks to provide any needed support to all sectors and companies with access to debt.

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Most of these stimulus packages and liquidity measures are aimed at supporting current government spending and providing liquidity to companies with assets, access to debt, and in traditional sectors. It’s not a surprise, then, that at the same time as we see the largest fiscal and monetary support plan since World War II, we are already witnessing two dangerous collateral effects: the rise of zombie companies and the collapse of small businesses and start-ups.

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Additionally, according to Deutsche Bank and the Bank of International Settlements, the number of zombie companies in the eurozone and the United States, large companies that cannot cover their interest expense costs with operating profits, has rocketed to new all-time highs.

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“Europe’s productivity problem is partly due to the rise of zombie firms that crowd out growth opportunities for others.” This problem is only increasing in the current crisis.

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The rise in bond defaults is a consequence of previous high leverage in a weakening operating income environment. This should not be a concern if creative destruction works to improve the economy, as inefficient companies are taken over by efficient ones and new investors restructure challenged businesses to make them competitive. The big problem is that massive liquidity and low rates are perpetuating overcapacity and keeping an extraordinary amount of zombie firms alive.

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Maintaining and increasing zombie firms destroys any positive effect from restructuring and innovation. Additionally, to maintain cash flows and stay alive, companies are cutting investment in innovation, technology, and research. Meanwhile, small businesses that do not have access to debt or own hard assets are dissolving every day.

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In most developed economies, where 80 percent of employment comes from small businesses, the “bailout of everything” is becoming a massive transfer of wealth from the new economy to the old economy, preventing a stronger and more productive recovery.

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The “Bailout of Everything” (as long as it’s large) creates significant risks. Low productivity and indebted sectors survive, creating a perverse incentive that benefits malinvestment and poor capital allocation. Additionally, as these sectors already had overcapacity and structural problems, their bailout does not lead to higher job creation or stronger investment. Furthermore, high-productivity sectors will likely suffer the tax burden that rises after these governments’ rescue plans, diminishing the employment potential and the likelihood of rising real wages as productivity growth stalls."

Trechos retirados de "The Risk of the ‘Bailout of Everything’"

Porque falham as transformações

"The Four Most Common Failure Modes for Transformative Innovations in Large Organizations

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Too late.  Leaders recognize the need for new growth but don’t commit to it until their competitors have already seized the opportunity.

Too few resources.  Leaders appropriately organize and adopt long-term growth initiatives but fail to allocate sufficient dollars, the right people, and enough of their own mindshare to sustain them.

Impatience for growth.  Many transformative ventures are slow to bloom. Perhaps an early business experiment fails or has slower than expected results. Instead of redesigning the experiment to learn more, senior leadership pulls the plug. Or maybe it experiences some early-stage success and senior leadership demands that it be scaled up before all of its premises have been thoroughly tested, causing the venture to make a fatal stumble.

Competition from the core.  A challenge with growth in the core may cause resources to be diverted away from a promising new venture. Or, in a misguided attempt to restore organizational efficiencies, leadership might “cram” a successful new venture back into the core prematurely, causing it to lose the unique attributes that were responsible for its success."

Eu acrescentaria um quinto factor: a falta de foco, a falta de instinto de matador. Até se indentifica a necessidade de mudança, mas não se muda, mas não se tem fogo no rabo.

Trecho retirado de “Lead from the Future” de Josh Suskewicz.

"The biggest challenge for many business leaders is to see their role as orchestrating, not commanding"

"The business leaders who are best at managing in uncertain worlds also rely on systems thinking that allows them to sort out complex problems, the report concluded. They prioritize diverse inputs, teamwork, and partnerships. These leaders assemble the best team they can, and trust that team to find the information the organization needs to get through a crisis.

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“These CEOs understand they don’t need to know it all themselves,” 

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expects the U.S. economy to contract by 11 percent by the end of the year. Significantly, it estimated that 60 percent of that contraction will be the direct consequence of uncertainty: that is, a condition in which important information is unknowable.

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Because nobody knows what is next, no CEO reasonably can be taken to task for not knowing everything. That provides an opening for leaders who have deployed top-down, command-and-control leadership styles to switch to a mind-set that helps them and their teams better navigate uncertain conditions.

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Leaders don’t have to like dealing with uncertainty in order to master it. “You can be uncomfortable with uncertainty. We don’t grow if we don’t feel uncomfortable,”

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The biggest challenge for many business leaders, in Leavitt’s view, is to see their role as orchestrating, not commanding. That means making sure your employees are in touch with their own desires and potential just as much as your business is aligned with its sense of purpose.

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The point isn’t for CEOs to be the hero, Leavitt said, but for them be able to say, once they are past the crisis: “Look at how the team was built up during this time! Look at what they did! Look how they stepped up!”

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That behavior makes all the difference between whether employees respond to uncertainty by becoming more creative and proactive, or overstressed and paralyzed. The ability to cope with uncertainty and keep pursuing your mission will be the difference between success and failure."

Trechos retirados de "Why managing uncertainty is a key leadership skill"

"You aren’t going to out-Amazon Amazon"

Em vez de retalho físico pensemos em imprensa, pensemos em empresas stuck-in-the-middle

"As scarcity disappears across so many areas, as the pace of change accelerates, and as newly empowered customers flex their muscles, the definition of boring has changed, in many cases radically. The bar for good enough has been raised. Not only do customers today know when they could do far better, it’s increasingly easy for them to demand what they want. And they can find many new and innovative brands willing and ready to respond. Today, even very good often doesn’t make the sale.

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Yet even if you have a product or service that is unique, highly customer relevant, and not the least bit boring, getting noticed and commanding attention is increasingly difficult.

In this age of digital disruption we are drowning in a tsunami of information and deluged by all manner of distractions. The exploding world of choice that the internet and smartphones offer has delivered great benefits, but it has also created a tremendous amount of clutter.

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What it takes to get noticed, to command attention, to be remarkable enough that whatever product, service, or idea we are selling gets adopted and spread, requires us to boost today’s signal many times more than would have worked in the recent past. Anything else risks not getting heard or seen, much less acted on, in our ever-noisier world.

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what so many get wrong is believing that merely being better gets the job done. Better is not always the same as good. Far too often what is touted as innovation is providing a slightly better version of mediocre. Slowing the rate of descent is, in some sense, progress, but without a major change in direction, eventually we still crash.

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You aren’t going to out-Amazon Amazon. Maybe Walmart, Target, or a very short list of other well-resourced retailers can in certain instances.

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Ask yourself: how can retailers with higher costs than Amazon possibly win a price war? How is offering free shipping or BOPIS going to counter Amazon’s dominance in product assortment and delivery convenience? Any strategy like that is based on a hope that Amazon will follow the same profit and investment calculations that “normal” retailers do. How do you know, even if some of these efforts manage to gain some traction, that Amazon won’t respond even more aggressively or find some other way to make your life miserable?

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Matching Amazon on prices and/or delivery times may seem like a good move, until you actually have to bear the cost of doing it. You are starting a race to the bottom that you can’t possibly win.

So what can be done? For most retailers, particularly those that lack the resources and capabilities that the mega-brands have, the only decision is to double down on (or lean into) those improvements that make your brand more customer relevant, more unique and sustainable over the long term.

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For retailers that still garner most of their sales from their physical stores, that means appreciating and nurturing the unique advantages of brick-and-mortar locations: personal service, compelling visual merchandising, unique products, well-curated assortments, social experiences, instant gratification, and the like. You can complement that in-store experience with a well-harmonized e-commerce offering. Mostly you can embrace the choice to be remarkable on retail elements that Amazon can’t match.”

Trechos retirados do capítulo 10 “An Especially Bad Time to Be Boring” do livro “Remarkable Retail”

"that model died this year"

México = Marrocos, Turquia, Roménia e Bulgária.

"“You have a couple of big names already moving to Mexico, all auto parts,” says Alfred Nader, president of OFX North American in San Francisco. “Some of them are leaving China and going to Mexico because of the new NAFTA. ... Most people don’t really think of this, but Mexico is cheap and on a labor perspective it is as cheap or cheaper than China,” says Nader.

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“Using China as a hub...that model died this year, I think,” says Vladimir Signorelli, head of Bretton Woods Research, a macro investment research firm.

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“Our survey shows that a large majority of executives are moving or have moved portions of their operations from another country to Mexico,” says Christopher Swift, Foley partner and litigator in the firm’s Government Enforcement Defense & Investigations Practice.

For those considering moving operations, 80% said they will do so within the next two years. They are “doubling down on Mexico”, according to Foley’s report."

Na pressa, na turbulência pós-covid, algumas encomendas passarão para Portugal, mas poucas e por pouco tempo. 

Cada vez mais somos um "boring country" como nos destacamos? Pelo topo inferior dos custos? Não! Pelo topo superior do contexto? Não!

Como nos poderíamos tornar "remarkable"?

Em banho-maria continuaremos.

 

Trechos retirados de "Most Small Businesses Say They’re Looking To Leave China" 

O futuro do país em banho-maria

Ontem passei as mãos pelas primeiras páginas de um livro, "Pirates in the Navy". Título que joga com as palavras da frase:

"Why join the navy when you can be a pirate!"

E ao ler a introdução aconteceu-me o estranho caso de ler e constantemente pensar em Portugal.

Por navy entenda-se os incumbentes instalados, as empresas grandes, o sistema político.

Por pirates entenda-se as startups, muito mais ágeis e sem tradição a tolher os movimentos.

Agora, ao escrever estas linhas, recordo que o livro "Why Nations Fail" começa com o museu Veneza, uma cidade dominada pela navy que escolheu o imobilismo só para proteger os interesses dos seus incumbentes.

"Startups can do anything.

Companies can only do what’s legal. [Moi ici: Mas que comparação é esta entre a navy e Portugal? Um país que em cerca de 45 anos já vai a caminho da 4ª injecção de capital externo para se salvar(?), deve ter algo de pôdre embutido nos caboucos da sua organização. Um país em que se pensa que só se pode fazer o que é permitido na lei é um país doente e a precisar de piratas]

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Having no business model and no market reputation to defend makes startups quite dangerous as competitors. If you combine this with the fact that startups are now better funded and their incentives are aligned with their investors’ goals, large companies are competing with a formidable foe.

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Meanwhile, inside most large companies there are still leaders who question the need to innovate.  [Moi ici: Dentro dos principais partidos, carregados de socialistas de direita ou de esquerda, poucos, muito poucos são os que percebem que algo tem de mudar nesta Dinamarca. Tenho idade suficioente para me lembrar do tempo em que Cavaco defendeu e impôs, contra tudo e contra todo o establishment, a abertura da economia à iniciativa privada com as privatizações. Havemos de chegar a um novo momento do mesmo tipo, não com os actuais políticos, demasiado presos a um modelo que funcionava quando se podia desvalorizar a moeda e enganar os papalvos. Já escrevi aqui no tempo da troika, a ideia de Louçã/Ferreira do Amaral de desvalorizar moeda e de Ferraz da Costa de baixar salários é na prática a mesma. Só que ainda não chegamos lá. Ainda estamos reféns da geração dos distribuidores de riqueza a partir de thin air] To be fair, there is a discernible shift in leadership attitudes towards innovation taking place in most organisations. However, in some large companies there is still an intractable core of leaders who actively resist innovation projects as a waste of time and resources.

It is a myth that innovation is sexy. In a lot of companies, it is career suicide. So, while startups are focused on resisting enemies and competitors that are outside their company, innovators within large companies have to contend with enemies and competitors inside their own companies as well. [Moi ici: Tipicamente as pessoas mais empreendedoras acabam por sair destas organizações incumbentes. Preferem arriscar e respirar melhor do que se subjugar à promessa "Ajoelha-te perante mim e dar-te-ei todo o poder ...". E o que é a emigração portuguesa senão uma decisão de não pactuar com o status-quo?]

Corporate innovation is a paradox. Intrapreneurs – employees who work on entrepreneurial ideas inside an established company – have to innovate for the future, inside a machine designed to run the current business. It is the management of the current business that tends to get in the way of innovation. The bureaucracy and incentives of the organisation are all geared towards improving and exploiting the currently successful products and business models.

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At the same time, these large corporations have entrepreneurial employees who are constantly trying to innovate. As far as I am concerned, these people are crazy. They wake up every morning and go to work to swim against the tide. This is insane! And yet, they exist: [Moi ici: Isto faz-me lembrar uma conversa que tive ontem no Twitter com alguém, sem skin-in-the-game, acerca do salário mínimo... Estes malucos do livro são os empreendedores, os empresário em Portugal. Um país que não os respeita, que pensa o pior deles, mas que depende deles. Podem ter o 9º ano de escolaridade mas nunca mandarão o país para a bancarrota. Podem não gerar muito valor acrescentado, mas fazem a sua parte o melhor que podem e só esperam, como numa corrida de estafetas, que apareça quem faça melhor do que eles. Só que quem protesta ou é funcionário, ou tem medo de arriscar...] passionate employees who are committed to helping their company become more innovative. They can see the future coming and they are committed to ensuring that their company survives in that future."

O futuro do país estará em banho-maria até que apareça alguém capaz de libertar o país para um modelo que não esteja constantemente a depender de esmolas externas e de impostagem crescente.

 

"The new normal will be different"

"It’s important to understand that the fashion industry is full of small brands and many will not survive, especially in countries where the market is not big enough. In Southern Europe, digital is not as big as it is elsewhere. The idea of going back to normal there will be different, and there will be fewer brands.

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Will Chinese tourists come to Paris in the next six, ten, or twelve months? I doubt it. The new normal will be different.

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Use this opportunity to reimagine what the fashion life cycle should look like in terms of speed, overproduction, and consumption to change things for the better."

Trechos retirados de "A perfect storm for fashion marketplaces"

"a company has to change its corporate mindset"

Enquanto lia o capítulo 9 “Defenders of the Status Quo” do livro “Remarkable Retail” só pensava em Portugal e na sua classe política:

"There is a simple psychology model often referred to as the “3 As,” which stands for awareness, acceptance, and action. This way of understanding the steps a person must go through to make lasting change can guide us to what needs to happen collectively when a retailer embarks on the journey from good enough to remarkable. Before it can follow individual steps, a company has to change its corporate mindset—and that can be the most difficult obstacle of all.

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We may not like gravity. We may find it rather inconvenient at times. We might even think gravity is an outdated concept. It doesn’t matter. Gravity doesn’t care. Gravity always wins.

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The sad irony is that while many a retail manager has been sacked for failing to meet a quarterly or annual sales or profit plan, plenty of leaders stay in power doing the same old things over and over again, treading water while a new tranche of customer and shareholder value is created by industry insurgents who either steal share from the defenders of the status quo or seize new opportunities that were there for the taking simply by redefining the way existing or emerging customer outcomes could be addressed.

...

his complete disregard for reality is obvious and pathetic.

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It’s been said that hope is not a strategy. But this is what passes for an innovation program at many companies. Even if a company is not entrenched in defending the status quo, many are living a fantasy, spinning what amounts to a fairy tale of a growth strategy."

Excerto de: Steve Dennis. “Remarkable Retail”. Apple Books. 

Não se trata de magia, está escrito no ADN dos políticos

Não se trata de magia, está escrito no ADN dos políticos socialistas da direita à esquerda. Gente mais preocupada com a distribuição do que com a criação de riqueza.

Em Outubro de 2015 publiquei este postal "Curiosidade do dia" e lancei este logotipo a prever a quarta vindo FMI:

Agora, "Em risco de bancarrota e ninguém diz nada?" 

"As semelhanças de 2020 com 2009 são arrepiantes. A uma brutal crise económica à vista, o governo responde com um grande programa de investimento público, mais uma vez nas escolas, em computadores para todos e em obras de regime com muitas rotundas e variantes. A Parque Escolar foi a festa que se viu. Agora, não há concursos até 750 mil euros e as prioridades não são discutidas, ao contrário do prometido. Uma nova La Seda assoma no horizonte, desta vez disfarçada de fábrica de hidrogénio em Sines, para passar mais subsídios a favor dos lobies das fotovoltaicas.

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Entretanto, continua prometido um aumento nominal de 1 por cento nos salários dos funcionários públicos que, como se sabe, a ser aplicado implica um aumento de 2 a 3 por cento na massa salarial a cargo do Estado, por causa das horas extraordinárias e outros pagamentos indexados ao vencimento base"

Aguardemos os desenvolvimentos e as suas consequências

Um interessante artigo sobre a Inditex e o seu desempenho durante a quarentena em "Zara Owner Built a Post-Covid Retailer Before Coronavirus" em linha com o que ouvi ontem à noite num telejornal qualquer.

Uma informação que não consta deste artigo e que ouvi no tal telejornal foi sobre a intenção da empresa em futuramente fechar um certo número de lojas. Recordei de imediato o que tinha lido ontem, na minha caminhada matinal, no capítulo 8 "Optimizing to Extinction" do livro “Remarkable Retail”.

O capítulo é sobretudo sobre as empresas de retalho que estão mal, e esperam resolver o seu problema de uma má proposta de valor, ou uma má execução, fechando de uma penada uma série de lojas para cortar nos custos.

"For the better part of a decade, Wall Street has been pushing under-performing retailers to cut expenses and close stores.

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[Moi ici: O trecho que se segue é notável!!!] Some analysts have even gone to great lengths to calculate the number of stores that a given retailer would need to close to return to an acceptable level of store productivity, making the faulty assumption that reducing the denominator has zero impact on the numerator. [Moi ici: Ficamos a pensar naqueles analistas que acham que realmente os humanos têm todos uma mama e um testículo]

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[Moi ici: O autor compreende e defende que marcas que sobre-expandiram o número de lojas terão de encerrar algumas, mas] More useful for our purposes is how significant store closings impact the long-term viability of a brand. Unless a retailer significantly over expanded, closing large numbers of stores will make it materially less customer relevant. The company is effectively abandoning a trade area and “firing” the customers that live or work there. Unless a convenient alternative location is nearby, this business is almost always lost to local competition. Some retailers have counted on their website to pick up the volume they are losing by closing stores. This strategy rarely pans out. First, the reason the customers shopped in the store is, presumably, they like shopping in stores better than online. Unless the products being sold are truly unique, the shopper can usually find plenty of brick-and-mortar stores offering acceptable substitutes nearby.

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stores play an important role in marketing by creating and reinforcing top-of-mind awareness, even for customers who rarely set foot in the store. Brick-and-mortar locations tend to play a disproportionate role in cost-effective customer acquisition. Pulling stores out of a market is often akin to withdrawing significant advertising dollars. Overall brand impact is reduced, particularly compared to direct competitors that have greater"

Só porque as vendas homólogas online cresceram 90% em Abril passado, a Inditex pensa fechar uma série de lojas. Aguardemos os desenvolvimentos e as suas consequências.

"gross generalities about macro trends and underlying economics"

Há muitos anos que escrevo sobre a importância de trabalhar para clientes-alvo e não para a média do mercado.

Recordo o uso do termo: miudagem.

Por isso foi engraçado encontrar no capítulo 6 “The Future Will Not Be Evenly Distributed” do livro “Remarkable Retail” este trecho:

"Once the dust settles, we can tote up the winners and losers on the corporate side, but it will be clear that consumers throughout most of the world will have realized more choice, lower prices, and improved convenience that we could scarcely imagine even five years ago. It’s almost like a welfare program for consumers, rich or poor. On average, it’s all good.
But if you find much actionable data in the fact that the average person living today has one breast and one testicle, then continue your focus on industry market-share averages, broad conclusions about “the customer,” and gross generalities about macro trends and underlying economics."

Cautela e caldos de galinha...

Vamos supor que não concorda com as ideias de Daniel Lacalle em "El Banco Central Europeo no elimina el riesgo, lo disfraza". No entanto, experimente fazer uma experiência mental. E se Daniel Lacalle tem razão? Como é que a sua empresa se deveria estar a preparar para ser resiliente quando rebentar a grande tempestade?

Para reflexão

O capítulo 6 “The Future Will Not Be Evenly Distributed” do livro “Remarkable Retail” tem um trecho que faz sorrir e descobre a careca a muitas startups:

"About ten years ago, I attended a conference where the opening speaker was Zappos’s CEO and founder, Tony Hsieh. As was typical for the time, he regaled the audience with tales of hyper-growth, amazing customer service, and an entrepreneurial culture that lived to deliver a wow experience. It was around the time Amazon plunked down over $1 billion to acquire the nascent shoe seller.
As I recall, the speaker who followed Hsieh deviated from his stated topic, starting out by telling us about his plans to open the best hotel in the world along New York City’s Central Park. The hotel would feature a dizzying array of restaurants, all helmed by celebrity chefs, and the largest hotel health club ever. Rooms would be the largest in the city, and all would have spectacular views of the park through floor-to-ceiling windows. Complimentary helicopter or limousine service would be available from all area airports. “But the best part,” he said, pausing for dramatic effect. “The best part is our prices will be 20 percent lower than the Four Seasons, the Mandarin Oriental, The Peninsula, or any other of the very top hotels in Manhattan.”
Having delivered his pitch, he asked, “So, how many of you would be interested in staying in this hotel?”
Most hands in the room shot up immediately.
“How many of you want to invest in this hotel?”
Not a single hand went up.
“That’s fascinating. Because I’m not sure that what I just described is fundamentally different than what you just heard about Zappos or any of these other brands offering out-of-this-world service and ridiculously low prices."

Para reflexão:

“It’s hard to imagine a scenario where a traditional retailer could or would recommend a strategy whereby it lowered its prices, dramatically increased its marketing spending, and added expensive extra features and benefits to deliver “incomparable value” and “ninja-like” customer service, with the promise to the board of directors of “Sure, we will lose hundreds of millions of dollars for the next several years, but trust me, within a decade—fifteen years tops—this is going to be truly phenomenal.” For legacy retailers that seems nuts. For “disruptors” it’s a key feature.”

"has metastasized into a collapse of the demand side"

"But there are clear signs that the collapse of economic activity has set in motion problems that will play out over many months, or maybe many years. If not contained, they could cause human misery on a mass scale and create lasting scars for families.
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The fabric of the economy has been ripped, with damage done to millions of interconnections — between workers and employers, companies and their suppliers, borrowers and lenders. Both the historical evidence from severe economic crises and the data available today point to enormous delayed effects.
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The economy is a gigantic machine in which one person’s consumption spending generates someone else’s income. The pandemic began by crushing the economy’s productive capacity — a shock to the supply side of the economy, as many types of business activity were shut down for public health concerns.
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In normal times, when there is a negative supply shock (say, a year of drought that reduces agricultural crops, or new tariffs that make imports more expensive), the pain can be intense for people in sectors directly affected, yet the economy as a whole adjusts.
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But this crisis is so large and so sudden that the usual adjustment mechanisms aren’t working very well.
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The people losing their jobs because of shutdowns cannot easily find new ones, because so much of the economy is shuttered at the same time. The businesses in danger of closing have cut every possible expense
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The result is that what started as a disruption to the supply side of the economy has metastasized into a collapse of the demand side
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The demand shock, with lagged effects, is only beginning to hurt major segments of the economy, like sellers of capital goods that are experiencing plunging sales; state and local governments that are seeing tax revenues crater; and landlords who are seeing rent payments dry up."

Trechos retirados de "Don’t Lose the Thread. The Economy Is Experiencing an Epic Collapse of Demand."

Conhecer o cliente do cliente

Muitas empresas não deviam esquecer este aviso, "DO YOU KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER’S CUSTOMERS?"

Pode ser a diferença entre o fracasso e o sucesso.

"What do you know about the kinds of prospects your best customers are trying to attract?
...
The best way to refer qualified new customers is to know as much as you can about their ideal customer profile."

Cada vez mais o caminho passa por trabalhar para além da relação diádica e passar a trabalhar em rede, em ecossistema.