Will this Business Revolutionize How Men Shop and Rescue Me from My 1970′s Fashion Training at the Same Time?

January 23, 2009 By 8 Comments

Note from Art: I plan on chronicling my experience in several posts over the next few weeks, with an exciting new men’s clothing/shopping service that I was introduced to called Trunk Club.  I’m not sure if I’m more excited about the solution to my fashion challenges, or the fact that this is the best recent example that I’ve seen of a service that so perfectly solves a problem that it practically sells itself. (The authors of the book Tuned In describe this type of offering as a Resonator.)

I have no stake in the Trunk Club for Men and when I let the co-founder, Matthew Scott, know that I planned on posting about my experience with his service, he urged me to help them get better.  I love his attitude! And I will.

I’m not sure guys are supposed to write posts about fashion. I’m expecting a call from my friend Chris, encouraging me to turn in my “man card” for writing on this topic.  He did that the one and only time I was dumb enough to indicate that I might have caught a fleeting glimpse of Oprah’s show when author Marcus Buckingham was the guest.

We’ll Chris, my excuse is even better this time.  I’m mixing fashion with business research.  Take that!

OK, some background is in order here on the roots of my fashion challenges.

First, I am a child of the 70s, when to quote my kids looking at the old family pictures, “What were you people thinking?”

“Hey, what’s wrong with yellow and green plaid bell-bottoms paired with rust colored shirts?” I retort to these logo-covered and self-annointed fashion critics. I don’t have the heart to tell them that I look at these same pictures in horror that anyone ever thought those clothes were acceptable for public consumption.

For those too young to recall, the 70’s started out with post-hippie era styling and concluded with disco.  Leisure suits were born somewhere in the middle of that “tasteful” decade.

Second, I transitioned at some point in my career from the standard blue suit, white shirt uniform that we wore at Panasonic to software-sloppy…the business casual that dominated the software industry for so many years.

Combine my 70’s experience with the blue suit to software casual experience, and I have a wardrobe that is just short of lousy with a sense of style that matches.

The Problem:

My professional world has transitioned from the daily corporate casual to super casual (home office) or on-stage as a speaker, seminar leader or MBA instructor.  I need some great quality clothes for the “on” days, and thankfully, there are many of these days on the calendar in the coming months. It’s time for a wardrobe makeover.

A bit more background. is in order.   I hate shopping. I hate shopping for clothing most of all.  There are many bad things that could be done to me that would be less painful than shopping.  The thought of it makes me recoil in horror.  If my wife suggests a shopping trip that will take us even close to the Men’s department, my mind goes blank, my eyes glaze over and I immediately feel the need to take a long nap.  Ask me to figure out any color and pattern combinations beyond white or off-white with dark and once again my mind goes blank.

I survived fashion hell for a number of years with a great retail clerk at the former Marshall Fields.  Jan learned my tastes and did a pretty good job of helping me out during my once a year visit. Well, Fields is gone and so is Jan, replaced by crappy off the rack merchandise and unhelpful staff at the local Macy’s.  My last fashion lifeline disappeared when Fields died.

Until now.  Enter Trunk Club for Men. The service is positioned as an innovative new service for busy professional men and successful entrepreneurs.  There is a membership component that gives it an air of personalization and exclusivity.  If this works, it may rank as one of the great problem-solving discoveries of my adult life.

One to One meets Web 2.0:

Here’s the business in a nutshell. You start by visiting the website and completing an application. I was invited to join by the co-founder, but be aware that the process does involve completing a no-fee application that helps Trunk Club understand a bit more about you and your clothing tastes and needs.  More about the application process in a future post.

Once you’ve been accepted as a member, you meet via webcam with a personal fashion consultant who interviews you to understand your requirements and your budget parameters.  After your webcam interview, your fashion consultant shops for and ships your clothes.

Once you’ve received the shipment, you and your consultant reconvene on a webcam call to review the items. You decide what you will keep and return the rest, paying only for your final selections. That’s it.  Oh, and your consultant will even direct you to a Trunk Club approved tailor in your area.

Let’s review:

  • I never have to leave my house.  The clothes come to me.
  • I gain the best guidance of a fashion pro.
  • I return what I don’t want and only pay for what I keep.  There are no other fees or no minimum purchase amounts.
  • The fashion consultant shops to my budget and seeks out the best quality and value that fits that budget.
  • Unlike the visit to a retail store, your fashion consultant works with you over time to learn your likes and dislikes and to fill out your wardrobe with a plan in mind.
  • If I need more of something, I send a note and things magically show up.

This rocks!

While I’m being a bit melodramatic in my description of my helplessness in the line of retail fire, I truly love this concept. I don’t know too many guys that care about shopping and those that do seem to operate with a search and destroy mentality.  Go in, select and exit as quickly as possible. There’s no plan, just a short-term mission.

With Trunk Club for Men, my modus operandi hasn’t changed, but all of the pain is gone.  I will spend minimal time thinking about the topic and leave the execution to a professional.  No stores, no changing rooms, just a big box of things to try on in my home. Delegating to experts is something that I can handle. This seems right on so many levels!

My parameters to Darcy, my consultant, are to focus on developing a small selection of high quality items of classic styling for use in speaking and workshop engagements.  Most of my work does not require a suit, so establishing a core grouping of jackets, shirts, slacks and ties is the top priority.

I can’t wait to see what Darcy sends me.

Stay tuned to see if this is as good as it sounds or too good to be true.  I’m betting on the former.

Future Post: I’ll share more about the video interview and business process, as well as the results of Darcy’s shopping trip.

Filed Under: Marketing, Strategy Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A Rave Against Miserable Customer Service, Lousy Leaders and Protectionist Policies

January 14, 2009 By Leave a Comment

One of my favorite, provocative business thinkers, Gary Hamel, says what we’ve all been thinking about in his Wall Street Journal blog post, “Too Many Industries Suffering from Detroititis.”

While the term “Detroititis” is not yet in common use, it isn’t hard to intuit the meaning.  A mix of myopic thinking, short-term management approaches and a damn the consumer mentality, all jump to my mind.

Hamel appropriately skewers the U.S. airline industry for suffering from a chronic case of this newly named malady. He also chastises the U.S. government for propping up this industry with a “blatantly protectionist policy” that bars foreign ownership of U.S. air carriers.

Note from Art: this protectionist policy and the adverse implications for consumers and for society speak to the heart of my post: If Ayn Rand Could See Us Now.

The U.S. airlines are easy and deserving targets.  It is nearly impossible to find any customer satisfaction, much less enjoyment flying with these broken-down flying bus companies.  (Apologies to any bus companies that I’ve insulted.)

More often than not, you deal with ridiculous lines, grumpy attendants and flight personnel that visibly hate their jobs.  Most of the customer service practices recently put into place are shortsighted and designed with the carrier in mind, not the customer.

In the vernacular of one of my favorite recent books, Tuned-In, the carriers truly do create remarkable customer experiences.  Unfortunately, they missed the memo on making these experiences positive ones.

The contrast between the customer experience on a U.S. Air Carrier and an overseas carrier is stark.  Fly Singapore Airlines or JAL and you’ll spend most of your trip in shock over how nice the experience can be.  Something will feel very different and out of place.  The poor treatment is gone, replaced by great service provided by people that seem to enjoy creating nice experiences for customers.

Other than the cathartic exercise of criticizing the U.S. carriers (of which I have over 1 million miles on), there are a few reminders for all of us in our businesses as we work to immunize our thinking against the deadly disease of “Detroititis.”

  • Keep the government out of the business of artificially protecting under performing industries and companies.  Hamel is right.  If Singapore Airlines wants to compete for routes in the U.S., they should have that option.
  • Evaluate what your customers truly think about their experience with your firm and DO SOMETHING to improve the experience.  The airlines employ legions of marketing people to fly around the globe and evaluating customer experiences…but nothing seems to come out from this effort other than dumb policies and new fees.
  • Fight for the customer like you livelihood depends upon it.  It does.
  • As a leader, work unceasingly to instill a sense of pride and commitment to customers in your workplace. If your business is a high-contact customer business, every person that touches a customer must strive to create a positive experience.  Working a ticket counter at terminal B at O’Hare may involve dealing with thousands of people per day who are stressed and frustrated.  Take away a little of their stress and frustration, treat them like humans and show them that you care!  Send thousands of people home everyday with an improved experience, and maybe your business will improve.  Go figure.
  • No one ever wants to talk to someone that they cannot understand and that they cannot hear on the telephone.  Stop subjecting us to these horrendous phone experiences.  If you are in charge of this area of your customer experience, what the blank are you thinking?

The Bottom-Line for Now:

The people that I don’t get are the managers and leaders responsible for managing and leading the customer service representatives in organizations that clearly have lousy customer service.  Fire yourself, please.

The customer experience at Gate C14 starts at the top of the organization. The same goes for your firm. Unfortunately, we can all learn a lot about what not to do from the auto companies and air carriers in the U.S.

Now quit reading and find something that you can do to improve the experience for your customers!

Filed Under: Leadership, Performance, Surviving Lousy Leaders Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Last Yard: AT&T’s Failure to Fully Satisfy in Spite of A Competition Killing Product

December 28, 2008 By 2 Comments

I suspect from the crowd at the Crystal Lake, IL AT&T store on the day after Christmas, that I was not the only person in America that had decided to surprise someone in their family with a new Apple 3G iPhone.  While I cannot be certain what it was like at the Verizon store where they do not carry the iPhone, the AT&T location was filled with people seeking to port their numbers and accounts over to this exclusive provider for the iPhone.

Before I get too far, my issue and our learning opportunities come from AT&T’s System for on-boarding new customers with the iPhone.  The store team on the ground in Crystal Lake was great throughout the entire process.

My issue is more with AT&T’s seemingly incomplete and poor system (not the store’s) for helping customers ramp up on this season’s ultimate killer product.

Here’s a quick synopsis of what it took.

  • I started the process of acquiring a new iPhone for my college-age son a few weeks ago.  I use AT&T in my business, but the family was with the other guys.  I needed to find out how I could add a phone and deal with the texting, internet and voice needs of a serial texter.  I called AT&T and spoke with 2 reps who were completely incapable of confidently telling me what my options were and what the final costs would be to add a second line, switch to family talk and meet my son’s specs for usage.  Time investment…approximately one hour and no satisfaction whatsoever.
  • I tried the website.  Same result…no luck.  I defy anyone to pull off this simple transaction using their website.  Also, on this prime shopping day during prime daytime hours, the site was down for quite awhile undergoing maintenance.  Hmmm.  I wonder who scheduled that event?
  • I went to the store in Crystal Lake, IL and 45 minutes later I walked out with a new iPhone and Brett’s assurance that I could bring it back after Christmas to port my son’s Verizon number and move all of his contacts.  I also had the 800 number for the AT&T porting service in case I wanted to try that on my own.  Outstanding!  Score one for dealing with real live people face to face.
  • Christmas Day…the iPhone was a huge hit and a total surprise.  My wife and I had resorted to a little bit of Christmas present cruelty by just mumbling and groaning something about contracts every time my son raised the question of whether there was an iPhone in his future.  OK, it was mean, but the kid is tough, the world is not always kind, and it sure heightened his surprise!
  • Christmas Day again.  I wondered whether AT&T was aggressive enough to have people standing by to help their many, many new customers activate their freshly unwrapped products and start the meter running for billing purposes.  No such luck.  The recorded message indicated that they were closed for the day.  (OK, I feel a bit Scrooge-like here, but if I have a killer product like the iPhone and my success is a function of getting people smiling and dialing or texting as quickly as possible, I might have taken a different path on the holiday.)
  • December 26.  I power-dialed the 800 number at AT&T, put the speakerphone on and wrote a blog post, answered e-mail and reviewed the latest draft of a presentation.  After one hour and twenty minutes of being on-hold, I gave up. The next step was the store.
  • We were early, and got right up to the counter.  Another helpful Rep efficiently ported over my son’s 245 contacts from the Verizon phone (big score!) and then started the phone number port process.  The dedicated line for store reps must have been slammed.  He was on hold for 34 minutes before anyone answered.  During this time, the store filled, the line grew and everyone was after the same thing.  The family next to us had a shopping bag filled with iPhones needing numbers.  Before long, every rep in the store was on the phone and customer service ground to a halt.
  • Truth be told, once our rep was connected with someone on the AT&T side, the port was carried out smoothly and we were quickly on our way.  Probably not a moment too soon, as the people in line were getting a little feisty as the reps continued to be stuck on hold waiting for help.

My Points:

Again, this is not one of those 8 hours on the tarmac with no food or water and the toilets clogged, stories that the airlines are so good at creating.  And yet from this experience, I can’t help but think that AT&T doesn’t get it.

  • Any opportunity to capture a competitor’s subscribers must be a huge opportunity for the phone companies.  There has to be a natural motivation to create happy new customers.  All of those Verizon converts are viable prospects for internet, cable and any of the other products that they come up with to slowly bleed consumers dry.  The iPhone is the killer-app for converting customers, and its star power may not last forever.
  • The iPhone is a resonator…(Tuned In).  It is truly a remarkable device that practically sells itself.   And while the device offers a remarkable experience (not necessarily for the phone portion), AT&T missed the chapter on creating remarkable customer experiences.
  • If you are AT&T, what chucklehead decided that it was OK to staff the call center with a Rep level that had customers waiting for hours on the phone or almost an hour in-store to get their new products up and running? Someone somewhere focused on costs, kept the staff lean and forgot that they were in the business of creating great customer experiences.  And oh yeah, I would have had people working on Christmas Day to help satisfy their overwhelming urge to use this great new product.

The Bottom-Line:

Thanks to the team in Crystal Lake for helping us out so effectively, and thanks to Apple for such a great product.  As for you AT&T, I can think of other industries and companies that are disappearing because they failed to execute on the last yard.  Any leader or any company that is arrogant and complacent about taking care of customers is likely not a good long-term bet.  Perhaps they will figure out the “system” to satisfy customers with the next killer product that comes along once in a lifetime.

Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Your Weekend Reading Suggestions from Management Excellence

December 12, 2008 By Leave a Comment

OK, I received more than a few comments that last week’s reading list was a bit aggressive.  Given the season and the fact that we want to leave everyone with adequate time to go out and do their part volunteering as well as stimulating the economy, I’ve trimmed the list this week to two great articles in the December issue of Harvard Business Review.

While HBR is a subscription publication (and in my opinion, mandatory reading for all professionals), a number of the feature articles are accessible at no charge during the month of publication.  I know they started this last year to promote subscriptions and it appears to still be the policy.

The first article is Finding and Grooming Breakthrough Innovators by Jeffrey Cohn, Jon Katzenbach and Gus Vlak.  The authors shoot down many of the myths that exist in identifying and nurturing innovators in the organization and offer some powerful and practical suggestions for recognizing and finding innovators and what to do with them once you’ve found them.

The article is framed by the questions most on the mind of board members and executives:  “How can we sustain innovation? And Do we have a plan for developing future leaders who can facilitate this goal?” You’ll leave this article armed with plenty of thoughts on innovation in your work environment and some ideas to put into practice.

Article number two ratchets up the innovation theme with Reinventing Your Business Model by some true heavy hitters.  Clayton Christensen (Innovator’s Dilemma), Henning Kagermann, co-CEO of SAP and Mark Johnson, Chairman of Innosight, an innovation and strategy consulting firm collaborate to help you better understand your business model and how to change it to leverage innovation.

This is a heady article by some sharp people, although I can’t help thinking that the book Tuned In does a better job distilling down the concept of adapting your approach to finding and filling unresolved needs and building your business around your customers.  Read the article for ideas on defining, dissecting and reinventing your business model and then pick up a copy of Tuned In for a slightly more practical approach to a critical issue.

Enjoy your reading time and don’t forget to take notes.

Filed Under: Marketing, Strategy Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Management Excellence Tips for Tough Times: Rethinking Customer Segmentation

December 1, 2008 By Leave a Comment

(Note from Art Petty: this is the first post at the new Management Excellence blog. If you are receiving this update via e-mail, please take the opportunity to visit the site and check out the new tools and resources.  And of course, the 160 plus posts on Best Practices in Leadership, Strategy and Sales and Marketing from the former site, Art Petty on Management, are all available at the new site.)

Ian MacMillan and Larry Selden writing, “Change With Your Customers and Win Big” in the December, 2008 Harvard Business Review, suggest that firms should look for advantage during an economic downturn by rethinking how they segment their customer groups.

They offer an example of a retailer of premium priced, private-label organic products who instead of viewing their market segment through traditional lenses, might break it into the following segments;

  • Health-conscious consumers who will stay pay a premium for foods that they perceive as having health benefits.
  • Frequent restaurant goers looking to trim expenses that might consider a line of high-quality carry out foods as an alternative.
  • Companies looking to rein in corporate catering costs that might substitute with the firm’s offerings.

Art’s Suggestions:

Many firms preoccupy on cutting costs and scaling back offerings, when they should be doubling their efforts to understand the unresolved problems of their customers. However, breaking the back of conventional thinking about either what to do in a recession or how to view your customer groups is a difficult task for many organizations.  Start by putting your team to work.

Instead of losing precious time and corporate energy to the collective nervousness that paralyzes organizations during tough times, get your team out into the field and into the market where your customers and their customers are.  Listen, ask questions and most of all, observe.  Where are they struggling?  What might help?  How do they use your products?  How do they use other products?  What unresolved problems can you identify?

Bring your observations back and get some help in what creatives like to describe as “ideating.”  We mere mortals call it brainstorming.  Regardless of the label, get your entire organization thinking about and generating ideas that might help your customer address their issues.  If you are looking for a process, pick up a copy of Tuned In and start with the formula that the authors suggest for creating “resonators,” offerings that solve unresolved problems so perfectly that they practically sell themselves.

The Bottom-Line For Now:

Rethinking your customer segmentation model is a potentially powerful approach for differentiating versus key competitors and for finding new needs that you can fulfill with your core capabilities.  Experiment with the various ideas and strengthen your team’s execution skills in the process.  In additional to the potential tremendous upside from solving customer problems, the energy and excitement generated during this process will convert the organization’s “sense of fear” into a “sense of urgency.”

Filed Under: Leadership, Marketing, Strategy Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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