Winning At Retail by Willard Ander and Neil Stern

The subtitle for this book is "Developing a Sustained Model for Retail Success". The ideas are straight forward. Don't try to be all things to all people. Be the best at one thing: price, fashion, selection, speed, or service. In fact, the authors challenge retailers to become "EST" at something and make that a core strategy and value around which all the decisions are made. The book has lots of annecdotes about major American retailers like WalMart and others. It is a simple goal with very far-reaching consequences for management and goal setting and it could be applied to any kind of organization. Nonprofits, for example, have a great deal of difficulty crystalizing their mission into a short statement but if they were to adopt an "est" i.e. "we are the best at doing ____________ (providing short-term housing, preventing high school students from dropping out of school, etc.) for __________ (these people), they would have a hook on which to hang their fundraising and program planning.

This is a fairly fast read and it challenges creative thinking throughout by posing the alternative to articulating the "est" strategy for your business as falling into the "black hole" of mediocrity- good is the enemy of the best, right? Or, as Simon Crowell is fond of saying, "It was a good enough performance, but frankly, you're forgettable..."

Ander, Willard N. and Stern, Neil Z. Winning At Retail. c. 2004. John Wiley & Sons Inc. New Jersey.