Reinvent Retail

Was just forwarded an interesting article from the Minnesota Post about the new deep discount price wars going on between Target and Wal-mart.  The big boxes are competing with Amazon on best-sellers by selling below cost to bring customers into the store.  Of course this sucks, both because they are devaluing books, and because indie retailers just cannot compete.  Sure you can argue that indie bookshops are more of a long-tail operation.

How about this thought experiment. I’ll go find a tiny retail operation.  400 sqft.  Carry the books and magazine I love (authors who have been published in McSweeney’s…) to build a reputation.  Prominently advertise that I can special order absolutely anything at prices competitive with Amazon.  Spree for an Amazon Prime account ($79 a year) and pre-order anything for 20% above amazon prices (which are still well below msrp)  I can have anything amazon sells in my store within 48 hours (probably just as fast as most distributors)  My customers are happy because they’re supporting a local bookshop who is now competing with Barnes and Noble.  I’m happy because I’m making a pretty decent margin with almost no effort.  Sure I’m purchasing from my biggest competitor, but why is this a bad idea?

Leave a comment, get us on twitter or email me directly: tyler at reinventretail.com with your thoughts.

Here’s the article.

I’m in San Francisco this week, staying with my old college roommate and learning fantastic new stuff at the Paypal Developers conference.