5 ms·

Not exactly - part of the department store experience is the relative expertise of staff in each department. And the sales pitch is one of high value, you might

Not exactly - part of the department store experience is the relative expertise of staff in each department. And the sales pitch is one of high value, you might even say beauty or care. Costco/Walmart are, from a European perspective, more like a "cash and carry" wholesaler masquerading as retail. There is very little effort made to present the goods, it's all about high volume and the lowest possible price. They're equivalent to our supermarkets/hypermarkets, but even bigger and broader in scope. This might sound like I'm stanning for department stores but not really. They're way more expensive than Amazon or discount retail, priced more like a specialist, and the quality and expertise doesn't always match the presentation. You can easily end up paying specialist prices for Amazon quality if you're not careful. Anyway, I think their time is up, perhaps with a few high-end exceptions surviving as a luxury tourist experience. In central London, we've a department store just for toys - like an old-fashioned and upmarket Toys'R'Us - and today's generation are basically un-wowed. Like, sure it has a lot of stock, but the big etail operators have a lot more again. And you don't have to travel 40 minutes to look at it.

jasode 2y ago
>part of the department store experience is the relative expertise of staff in each department. And the sales pitch is one of high value, you might even say beauty or care. Yes, exactly. To add to that, the salespeople in each department got a percentage sales commission. E.g. at Sears department store, the salesperson in jewelry dept was on a commission structure. The salesman working the Sears appliance center got a commission when the customer bought a washer & dryer or refrigerator; same situation in the Sears furniture department when a customer bought a sofa. In contrast, the big-box discount stores like Walmart and HomeDepot have hourly paid employees without sales commissions.
- JoshTriplett 2y ago
  That is an excellent reason not to go to such places. For some stores, "we don't work on commission" is a selling point to the customer.
  - dwaite 2y ago
    I think it tends to push to the extremes. Either it provides an incentive structure that retains knowledgable salespeople and provides a huge customer benefit, or it winds up being toxic for both the employees and customers.
    - devilbunny 2y ago
      Commissions work best when the customer and sales staff have long relationships and a decent knowledge of their markets. That's rarely the case at retail and pushes more hard-sell types. In B2B, it's about a relationship and trust. My FIL sells clothes. He's the middleman between the manufacturers and the stores. He has a territory and based on what's happening in other stores in the region he can steer them toward the right stuff for their store. I.e., what's this store's target age range, how affluent is the area, and so on. In return, when he does a good job with them, they will learn to trust his advice on what will generally sell well, and he ends up getting better commissions. He sells about a dozen lines from about six manufacturers, though about three or four of the lines tend to make up the bulk of his income. Since he's very good at his job, he can demand higher commissions than other salesmen just to take a line on. He's got the on-the-ground relationships, and a manufacturer will give him a bigger cut because he's not going to have canceled orders, returns, or headaches for them.
      - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
        Iterated prisoner's dilemma vs regular Same reason people are mean on the Internet
      - harimau777 2y ago
        As I understand it, that was one of the advantages of department stores. When you went to the jewelry section, for example, to buy your spouse an anniversary gift, the person working there was often the same person who recommended the jewelry you bought last anniversary.
        devilbunny 2y ago
- vector_spaces 2y ago
  I realize you aren't saying this, but note that while commissions are common among larger department stores, it doesn't hold true in general across specialist retailers that every staff member is on commission. For instance, if you go to a specialty cheese or wine shop, or a fishmonger or supplement store or even smaller local department stores, it's entirely possible to meet a sales clerk on commission, but it's also (perhaps more) likely that you won't. Also, RE staff commissions -- this isn't always bad for the customer as some here are implying. Although there are stores where commissions can come directly from the manufacturer, or where some manufacturers offer staff commissions but some don't -- this tends to be bad, nearly always. On the other hand, if the commission comes from the employer, this can incentivize staff to build deeper product knowledge and awareness of tradeoffs between different brands and products (not to mention: mindfulness of trends, customer feedback and return rates, etc), which IME leads to better service and better sales for everyone involved. I mean, yes, sure, it can also lead to employees simply parroting whatever they learned from the manufacturer brochure. YMMV Brick & mortar retailers that don't provide commissions at all often still allow manufacturer led trainings of staff -- the retailer views this as essentially free staff development and morale building by increasing staff product knowledge while often providing free product or steep discounts. Sometimes manufacturers will straight up give away prizes unrelated to the products they sell (I've seen supplement vendors give away iPhones or cash prizes, for instance). Sales reps sometimes build personal relationships with certain retail workers they know have influence over purchasing or merchandising decisions. Often this is explicitly forbidden, but in practice virtually every company that has rules like this also rarely enforces them In any case, my point is that commission structures do not imply that you're getting bad/misleading information from sales staff, and lack of commission structures don't mean that sales staff are free of undue influence from sales reps and manufacturers or that they otherwise aren't incentivized somehow to push a particular product on you.
  - RGamma 2y ago
    It's probably a good idea if you can find a self-employed expert for that specialty (like a decorator or kitchen builder) and have them make recommendations on what to get where. There's a (real, ahem) risk that you'll get a bad in-store salesperson that only cares about your card swipe.
galleywest200 2y ago
> Costco/Walmart are, from a European perspective, more like a "cash and carry" wholesaler masquerading as retail Costco _is_ wholesale, they just allow "members" to buy some of it too. Costco supplies quite a lot of things to enterprises such as office supplies and food.
dredmorbius 2y ago
Americans might be more familiar with FAO Schwartz, an iconic, up-market toy store formerly with a flagship in New York City on Fifth Avenue, which featured in several films including Big (starring Tom Hanks). The company has been through several ownership changes and bankruptcy in the past quarter century, and was at one point in fact owned by Toys "R" Us. Since 2016 it's been owned by ThreeSixty Group, of which also presently owns Sharper Image and Vornado. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAO_Schwarz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAO_Schwarz>
- cobbzilla 2y ago
  You can still see (and play!) the “Big Piano”. It was relocated after FAO closed and is now in the flagship Macy’s in NY. It’s looking kinda beat up these days, perhaps even symbolic.
buescher 2y ago
>part of the department store experience is the relative expertise of staff in each department That's been unusual in the United States for at least a generation. Nordstrom is a notable exception. Department stores have shed departments, too. The camera counters hung on for a while after other electronics and toys had gone to big box stores, but they've gone the way of the candy and nut counter.
- chefandy 2y ago
  Yeah. At best, most I've been to over the past couple decades seem to have roving cashiers that went through a program about how to be irritatingly salesy and might know where a specific thing was in their department. Sears was barely better than K-Mart in its death throes after the CEO decided to embrace the Hunger Games organizational strategy.
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    As I remember it, Sears was basically gutted by its CEO, Eddie Lampert, for his own personal profit at the expense of the company.
    - chefandy 2y ago
      From what I read, he theorized that internal competition was the only way to incentivize efficiency rather than being propped up by the rest of the company. Essentially, made each division compete for funding, which naturally lead to undermining and backstabbing— for example, the retail division started undercutting Kenmore with other brands— and eventually it all collapsed.
    - lotsofpulp 2y ago
      Lampert failed at the personal profiting part big time: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/18/business/sears-edward-lampert-bankruptcy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/18/business/sears-edward-lam... Probably one of the worst business moves in the 2000s.
- harimau777 2y ago
bane 2y ago
>part of the department store experience is the relative expertise of staff in each department > Costco/Walmart ... There is very little effort made to present the goods, it's all about high volume and the lowest possible price. I can see that perspective, but it's actually quite wrong. Costco (and similar) put significant effort into buying and presenting high quality goods. Their value proposition is that they don't need on-hand staff with relative expertise trying to match the consumer to product. A century-plus of data on consumer buying habits have allowed them to engineer an environment where their value proposition is that they are only presenting to the customer good quality for price items. The limited, rotating, selection is Costco (and similar) putting their relative expertise on the shelf and there's tremendous money spent by these companies figuring out how to do this. The "warehouse" environment is just another method to drive down costs in addition to eliminating pushy salespeople. Costco offers you usually one or two choices for an item, maybe for a few months, then it rotates out. Which one do you buy? It doesn't matter, they're both going to be of reasonable quality and value - a salesperson would try to direct a customer the same way. The stock rotation creates scarcity, but a good salesperson would let the consumer know "this sale is only valid for the next few days!" to create the same sense of urgency. These companies have huge analytics departments figuring out where the dairy should be in relation to the car batteries, and for how long they should have the special display for fresh shrimp running. Costco wants consumers to feel like they are getting wholesale prices. But the actual wholesale experience is completely different. Actual wholesale buying experiences are in some ways closer to the traditional buying experience. You're usually dealing with salespeople, hired by the originating company, who try to align you with the long tail of their product offering. Big wholesale markets even advertise that you get to meet salespeople and negotiate buying terms. https://youtu.be/RDd10-poMm8 https://youtu.be/RDd10-poMm8
- Supermancho 2y ago
  > Costco (and similar) put significant effort into buying and presenting high quality goods. That's a subjective statement. Costco's brands and products have been so consistently poor (and overpriced), we switched to Sams Club.
  - 2y ago

jasode 2y ago

>part of the department store experience is the relative expertise of staff in each department. And the sales pitch is one of high value, you might even say beauty or care. Yes, exactly. To add to that, the salespeople in each department got a percentage sales commission. E.g. at Sears department store, the salesperson in jewelry dept was on a commission structure. The salesman working the Sears appliance center got a commission when the customer bought a washer & dryer or refrigerator; same situation in the Sears furniture department when a customer bought a sofa. In contrast, the big-box discount stores like Walmart and HomeDepot have hourly paid employees without sales commissions.

JoshTriplett 2y ago
That is an excellent reason not to go to such places. For some stores, "we don't work on commission" is a selling point to the customer.
- dwaite 2y ago
  I think it tends to push to the extremes. Either it provides an incentive structure that retains knowledgable salespeople and provides a huge customer benefit, or it winds up being toxic for both the employees and customers.
  - devilbunny 2y ago
    Commissions work best when the customer and sales staff have long relationships and a decent knowledge of their markets. That's rarely the case at retail and pushes more hard-sell types. In B2B, it's about a relationship and trust. My FIL sells clothes. He's the middleman between the manufacturers and the stores. He has a territory and based on what's happening in other stores in the region he can steer them toward the right stuff for their store. I.e., what's this store's target age range, how affluent is the area, and so on. In return, when he does a good job with them, they will learn to trust his advice on what will generally sell well, and he ends up getting better commissions. He sells about a dozen lines from about six manufacturers, though about three or four of the lines tend to make up the bulk of his income. Since he's very good at his job, he can demand higher commissions than other salesmen just to take a line on. He's got the on-the-ground relationships, and a manufacturer will give him a bigger cut because he's not going to have canceled orders, returns, or headaches for them.
    - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
      Iterated prisoner's dilemma vs regular Same reason people are mean on the Internet
    - harimau777 2y ago
      As I understand it, that was one of the advantages of department stores. When you went to the jewelry section, for example, to buy your spouse an anniversary gift, the person working there was often the same person who recommended the jewelry you bought last anniversary.
      - devilbunny 2y ago
vector_spaces 2y ago
I realize you aren't saying this, but note that while commissions are common among larger department stores, it doesn't hold true in general across specialist retailers that every staff member is on commission. For instance, if you go to a specialty cheese or wine shop, or a fishmonger or supplement store or even smaller local department stores, it's entirely possible to meet a sales clerk on commission, but it's also (perhaps more) likely that you won't. Also, RE staff commissions -- this isn't always bad for the customer as some here are implying. Although there are stores where commissions can come directly from the manufacturer, or where some manufacturers offer staff commissions but some don't -- this tends to be bad, nearly always. On the other hand, if the commission comes from the employer, this can incentivize staff to build deeper product knowledge and awareness of tradeoffs between different brands and products (not to mention: mindfulness of trends, customer feedback and return rates, etc), which IME leads to better service and better sales for everyone involved. I mean, yes, sure, it can also lead to employees simply parroting whatever they learned from the manufacturer brochure. YMMV Brick & mortar retailers that don't provide commissions at all often still allow manufacturer led trainings of staff -- the retailer views this as essentially free staff development and morale building by increasing staff product knowledge while often providing free product or steep discounts. Sometimes manufacturers will straight up give away prizes unrelated to the products they sell (I've seen supplement vendors give away iPhones or cash prizes, for instance). Sales reps sometimes build personal relationships with certain retail workers they know have influence over purchasing or merchandising decisions. Often this is explicitly forbidden, but in practice virtually every company that has rules like this also rarely enforces them In any case, my point is that commission structures do not imply that you're getting bad/misleading information from sales staff, and lack of commission structures don't mean that sales staff are free of undue influence from sales reps and manufacturers or that they otherwise aren't incentivized somehow to push a particular product on you.
- RGamma 2y ago
  It's probably a good idea if you can find a self-employed expert for that specialty (like a decorator or kitchen builder) and have them make recommendations on what to get where. There's a (real, ahem) risk that you'll get a bad in-store salesperson that only cares about your card swipe.

galleywest200 2y ago

> Costco/Walmart are, from a European perspective, more like a "cash and carry" wholesaler masquerading as retail Costco _is_ wholesale, they just allow "members" to buy some of it too. Costco supplies quite a lot of things to enterprises such as office supplies and food.

dredmorbius 2y ago

Americans might be more familiar with FAO Schwartz, an iconic, up-market toy store formerly with a flagship in New York City on Fifth Avenue, which featured in several films including Big (starring Tom Hanks). The company has been through several ownership changes and bankruptcy in the past quarter century, and was at one point in fact owned by Toys "R" Us. Since 2016 it's been owned by ThreeSixty Group, of which also presently owns Sharper Image and Vornado. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAO_Schwarz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAO_Schwarz>

cobbzilla 2y ago
You can still see (and play!) the “Big Piano”. It was relocated after FAO closed and is now in the flagship Macy’s in NY. It’s looking kinda beat up these days, perhaps even symbolic.

buescher 2y ago

>part of the department store experience is the relative expertise of staff in each department That's been unusual in the United States for at least a generation. Nordstrom is a notable exception. Department stores have shed departments, too. The camera counters hung on for a while after other electronics and toys had gone to big box stores, but they've gone the way of the candy and nut counter.

chefandy 2y ago
Yeah. At best, most I've been to over the past couple decades seem to have roving cashiers that went through a program about how to be irritatingly salesy and might know where a specific thing was in their department. Sears was barely better than K-Mart in its death throes after the CEO decided to embrace the Hunger Games organizational strategy.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  As I remember it, Sears was basically gutted by its CEO, Eddie Lampert, for his own personal profit at the expense of the company.
  - chefandy 2y ago
    From what I read, he theorized that internal competition was the only way to incentivize efficiency rather than being propped up by the rest of the company. Essentially, made each division compete for funding, which naturally lead to undermining and backstabbing— for example, the retail division started undercutting Kenmore with other brands— and eventually it all collapsed.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    Lampert failed at the personal profiting part big time: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/18/business/sears-edward-lampert-bankruptcy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/18/business/sears-edward-lam... Probably one of the worst business moves in the 2000s.
harimau777 2y ago

bane 2y ago

>part of the department store experience is the relative expertise of staff in each department > Costco/Walmart ... There is very little effort made to present the goods, it's all about high volume and the lowest possible price. I can see that perspective, but it's actually quite wrong. Costco (and similar) put significant effort into buying and presenting high quality goods. Their value proposition is that they don't need on-hand staff with relative expertise trying to match the consumer to product. A century-plus of data on consumer buying habits have allowed them to engineer an environment where their value proposition is that they are only presenting to the customer good quality for price items. The limited, rotating, selection is Costco (and similar) putting their relative expertise on the shelf and there's tremendous money spent by these companies figuring out how to do this. The "warehouse" environment is just another method to drive down costs in addition to eliminating pushy salespeople. Costco offers you usually one or two choices for an item, maybe for a few months, then it rotates out. Which one do you buy? It doesn't matter, they're both going to be of reasonable quality and value - a salesperson would try to direct a customer the same way. The stock rotation creates scarcity, but a good salesperson would let the consumer know "this sale is only valid for the next few days!" to create the same sense of urgency. These companies have huge analytics departments figuring out where the dairy should be in relation to the car batteries, and for how long they should have the special display for fresh shrimp running. Costco wants consumers to feel like they are getting wholesale prices. But the actual wholesale experience is completely different. Actual wholesale buying experiences are in some ways closer to the traditional buying experience. You're usually dealing with salespeople, hired by the originating company, who try to align you with the long tail of their product offering. Big wholesale markets even advertise that you get to meet salespeople and negotiate buying terms. https://youtu.be/RDd10-poMm8 https://youtu.be/RDd10-poMm8

Supermancho 2y ago
> Costco (and similar) put significant effort into buying and presenting high quality goods. That's a subjective statement. Costco's brands and products have been so consistently poor (and overpriced), we switched to Sams Club.
- 2y ago