REAL STORY: Yes, You Can Have Balloons But Let’s Go Bigger!
Now here’s another real story for you.
One day, I heard that some people I knew were opening a new specialty shop (a dollar store with decorations in it) in the neighborhood shopping plaza that is home to the usual types of shops you would find in a typical plaza, including, of course, a giant grocery store that brings shoppers to the plaza in droves.
Important to the story is the fact that this town experienced explosive growth in the recent boom years and is loaded with lots of new families with tons of kids who have tons of birthdays. And the families who live in this town have money.
Now, the only problem with this neighborhood shopping plaza is that there is a good section and a bad section. A good place to park and a bad place to park.
Ok, so here comes Mary and her husband starting her dream business. They picked a location in the bad section.
And since he was formerly in the business world, he would do all of his own publicity and marketing. He did not need me (although I would be happy to help him). He was going to do a press release, he told me, with the headline “Husband gives wife the chance to open up her dream shop after he retires from his own successful career”.
I thought, this store is doomed.
But I did give him one word of advice. Whatever you do, I told him, keeping in mind they were in the bad section, make them come into the store. As soon as I said that, it seems as if he suddenly realized he was in the bad section of the parking lot.
A year or so goes by and I always notice there is never anything going on at the store. I pass it all the time as you have to drive by it on your way to park for the grocery store. Every time I drive by it, I glance in the window only to see the shop owner (the successful businessman) blowing up a few balloons. One time I saw him loading a bouquet of balloons into a customer’s car.
I really feel sorry for them. But I did like the idea of specializing in parties with all of the bells and whistles. Imagine if customers could just place an order for a party and along comes Mary with absolutely everything to make it perfect . . . birthday parties, celebrations, holiday parties . . . you name it, Mary’s store would decorate it. Mary loved to decorate. What fun that would be for both Mary and her customers!
One day, I bring a little four year old boy in to the store (I am babysitting) hoping to find lots of cool cheap toys (after all, it is a dollar store) that he would love.
BUT NO: They had nothing. But since I was there with a little four year old boy who thought we were getting a toy, we had to find something.
We did. A castle. OK cool. So we took our castle home and a little while later, he stops playing with it.
I said, “What’s wrong with the toy?”
He said, “It’s not fun. There’s no princess and there’s no knight to guard the princess”.
He was right. All they had in the toy was little plastic furniture to put in the castle. When we bought the toy, the store did not display any accessories that go with the toy next to it, like the princess and the knight, if indeed, they ever existed.
I started taking bets with myself on how long that store could last.
I was surprised at how long they hung on with no customers. There must be something I don’t know like they are secretly decorating all of the events, parties and galas in our town and all of the surrounding towns. They must be making a mint. Good for them, I thought. Although, it did bother me a bit when I would glance into the store and see no signs of life, other than the shop keeper sweeping the floors.
Then this happened.
I was there to pick up a calendar. My daughter needed a calendar to plan her trip. Every other store was out of calendars, but not Mary’s store. She had calendars. They were still there.
And so where the Christmas decorations. No really.
I was checking out at the register when I happened to glance up. I am not sure if Mary saw my eyes almost pop out of my head when I saw that the wall above her head was loaded to the brim with red ribbons, fake green wreaths, snowmen with their carrot noses and black hats and gobs of glistening silver and gold ornaments. It must have been beautiful in its day. But there was one problem . . . It was May. Like, in Memorial Day May.
I looked at Mary and told her it was over.
She told me all of the money was gone. They were broke.
I know.
But first I had to try. I told her how to make it work with little or no money. Assemble a marketing and sales team (get marketing interns from the college to help), use internet marketing to the max, start an email newsletter that’s packed with celebration tips and juicy “party must haves” all the while showcasing your expertise in party planning and branding yourself as the ‘decoration whisper’ for all of the area’s events. All that Mary’s customers would have to do was pick one of the beautiful “celebration party packages” she would provide via her website. Viola!
Yes, I told her, she could still do balloons, (she liked doing the balloons), but lets’ GO BIGGER!
She vacantly looked through me as I told her stories of how it could be.
A sea of green and gold balloons all tied up in bouquets as far as the eye could see. Cars lined up waiting their turn to pick up their pre-ordered balloon bouquets as a surprise for their graduate. Everyone who was anyone would have to have these balloons . . .
There was not even a glimmer of hope in her eyes.
It was over. The dream was gone.
The mistakes? What you don’t know is that the last dollar store in a better parking section in the plaza went out of business so we can easily defend that there was no market in this town for a dollar store.
But what can we say about Mary? What happened to Mary?
I think that Mary never wanted the dollar store at all. I think that her heart was never in it. It takes a lot of effort to fail that miserably, to lose everything down to the last penny.
Mary wanted parties, she wanted to decorate, she wanted balloons.
And in the end, it does not even matter that Mary had no internet marketing strategy, no sales force, no customers, no vision, no creativity, no passion. NO NOTHING.
But one thing in business does matter.
Follow your dreams and live your passion, because if you don’t . . .
you will not even have a knight to guard the princess.
“We know where your heart lies,” says Annie, “Our job is to expand our clients passion and match it to market demand.”
Wouldn’t you rather work with
Annie Jennings PR
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