Issue 43/2011

As many would know Cewe is one of the worlds leading providers of photo books and creative products. The following comment (in bold) from their chairman Dr Rolf Hollander is worth ENLARGING AND FRAMING :

 "The third quarter puts us in an excellent position for the Christmas season, which is becoming increasingly important and is by far the strongest quarter in terms of photo book sales,' says Dr. Rolf Hollander, chairman, Board of Management, CeWe.

The dramatic rise in demand for added-value photo products - notably photo calendars, photo greeting cards, CeWe Photo Books - as Christmas gifts at the expense of standard photos after summer holidays continues unabated, the company says. In a recent representative survey conducted throughout Germany, the opinion research institute forsa recently ascertained that more than half of the people in Germany (56 percent) prefer getting something self-made, such as a photo book or photos, as a gift. 

Furthermore, 90 percent of the respondents said they were especially pleased to receive a personally designed photo book."

Consumers are telling us they are all sick of giving and receiving "junk".

Help your customers give something special this year...a personally designed photo book, a personalised gift, a calendar of family photos or even a voucher for them to create something for themselves.

I bet you will gain repeat business if you do!

Cheers

Peter Rose

Your PMA Australia Executive

 National Chairperson

Richard Robertson
 

DIMA International President

Phil Gresham

philip@fotofast.com.au

Eastern Region TVP

and NSW Chairperson

John Ralph

jrcamerahouse@bigpond.com

WA, SA, NT, QLD TVP

and QLD Chairperson

Andrew Mason 

print@photocontinental.com.au

 TAS Chairperson

Tim Jones

 tim@perfectprints.com.au

VIC Chairperson

Jeff Crowley

jeff.crowley@fujifilm.com.au

SA Chairperson

Paul Atkins

paul@atkins.com.au

WA Chairperson

Murray Gibbs

murray@ggch.com.au

Director of Australian Activities

Peter Rose

prose@pmai.org

Australian Directors for PMA

John Paxton

jpaxton@paxtons.com.au 

Len Sandler

len.sandler@starshots.com.au

PPFA Chairperson

Ormond Williams

osgood@bigpond.net.au

APCI Chairperson

Paul Atkins

paul@atkins.com.au

PSPA Chairperson

Paul Dawson

pd@hydrophotographics.com.au

PIEA Chairperson

Gale Spring

g.spring@rmit.edu.au

PMA Australia Office

02 9454 2444

pmaaustralia@pmai.org

Editor

Glynn Lavender

pmaaustralia@pmai.org

Thursday evening at Customs House in Hobart saw over 50 trade members from Tassie, and suppliers from  the mainland celebrating a Xmas get together, as well as a belated farewell for Wolfgang and Karen of Mid City Cameras. 

Thanks to the efforts of Tim Jones and John Mullavey for their organisation, as well as the generous support of Kodak,Fuji,Tasco,CR Kennedy and Australian Photo Supplies.  

There is something about social functions in Tasmania, they are well attended ,relaxed and everyone gets involved.It must be something in the water!  

Was great to see industry stalwarts David Shepherd and Jeff Bester enjoying themselves.Everyone regrets Wolfgang and Karen not being involved in the future.Lovely people who always treated customers, staff and Reps in the same way...with friendliness and respect.You will be missed guys!.

The attached photos record the early part of the evening!!    

This blog post is part of the HBR Online Forum The Future of Retail.

When I announced that I was leaving Apple to take the reins as CEO of J.C. Penney this month, the business press (and lots of others) began speculating about whether I could replicate the Apple Store's success in such a dramatically different retail setting. One of the most common comments I heard was that the Apple Store succeeded because it carried Apple products and catered to the brand's famously passionate customers. Well, yes, Apple products do pull people into stores. But you don't need to stock iPads to create an irresistible retail environment. You have to create a store that's more than a store to people.

Think about this: Any store has to provide products people want to buy. That's a given. But if Apple products were the key to the Stores' success, how do you explain the fact that people flock to the stores to buy Apple products at full price when Wal-Mart, Best-Buy, and Target carry most of them, often discounted in various ways, and Amazon carries them all - and doesn't charge sales tax!

People come to the Apple Store for the experience - and they're willing to pay a premium for that. There are lots of components to that experience, but maybe the most important - and this is something that can translate to any retailer - is that the staff isn't focused on selling stuff, it's focused on building relationships and trying to make people's lives better. That may sound hokey, but it's true. The staff is exceptionally well trained, and they're not on commission, so it makes no difference to them if they sell you an expensive new computer or help you make your old one run better so you're happy with it. Their job is to figure out what you need and help you get it, even if it's a product Apple doesn't carry. Compare that with other retailers where the emphasis is on cross-selling and upselling and, basically, encouraging customers to buy more, even if they don't want or need it. That doesn't enrich their lives, and it doesn't deepen the retailer's relationship with them. It just makes their wallets lighter.

So the challenge for retailers isn't "how do we mimic the Apple Store" or any other store that seems like a good model. It's a very different problem, one that's conceptually similar to what Steve Jobs faced with the iPhone. He didn't ask, "How do we build a phone that can achieve a two percent market share?" He asked, "How do we reinvent the telephone?" In the same way, retailers shouldn't be asking, "How do we create a store that's going to do $15 million a year?" They should be asking, "How do we reinvent the store to enrich our customers' lives?"

It's not easy, of course. People forget that the Apple Store encountered some bumps along the way. No one came to the Genius Bar during the first years. We even had Evian water in refrigerators for customers to try to get them to sit down and spend time at the bar. But we stuck with it because we knew that face-to-face support was the very best way to help customers. Three years after the Genius Bar launched, it was so popular we had to set up a reservation system.

There isn't one solution. Each retailer will need to find its own unique formula. But I can say with confidence that the retailers that win the future are the ones that start from scratch and figure out how to create fundamentally new types of value for customers.

Ron Johnson is the CEO of J.C. Penney and the former senior VP for retail at Apple. Aninterview with Johnson appears in the December 2011 issue of Harvard Business Review. 

Australia's leading retail groups have joined together in a campaign to raise awareness of retail's role as the country's largest private sector employer, directly employing 1.2 million people and supporting half a million jobs in other industries.

An independent report prepared from research by The Right Research and PriceWaterhouseCoopers, shows retail supports one-in-seven jobs in a number of industries in this country, employing one-in-ten people directly. It also drives $120billion in economic activity across our economy, this despite the sector facing some of the hardest economic conditions in many years.

Australian National Retailers Association (ANRA) CEO Margy Osmond said the impact of hard times on retail reverberates around the whole economy, a fact many Australians are not aware of.

"Retail might be running in the slow lane of the multispeed economy, but it is more than pulling its weight when it comes to job creation and employment of Australians. The issues that affect the retail sector affect all those Australians employed in one of the many diverse careers the retail sector offers.

"We are very pleased to partner in this campaign with Commercial Radio Australia who via their nation-wide network of local radio stations, will be giving airtime and carrying ads in the run up to Christmas, spreading the message of how vital retail is to communities all over the country."

Australian Retailers Association (ARA) Executive Director Russell Zimmerman said the retail sector is a vital part of Australia's economic engine, paying over $36 billion in wages and salaries. "Not only do retailers directly pay the wages of Australians working in the sector, they also contribute to a total of over $60 billion in Australian wages including other industries like manufacturing, marketing, and research.

National Retailers Association (NRA) CEO Gary Black said the retail sector is made up of 140,000 businesses from sole traders through to our largest companies. This presents a diverse range of employment opportunities from owner operator, through to policy adviser or marketing executive.
"Retail is a dynamic and diverse industry sector, we want to see more Australians employed in it and involved with the sector through skills development and the destruction of barriers that slow down productivity and growth," he said.

The campaign is supported by a website www.retailisjobs.com.au* and a report exploring the economic value of the sector.  

We've all heard of Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the USA and the havoc that they both can play on small businesses there.

In an initiative that is gaining strength small retailers, in conjunction with American Express, are fighting back by promoting their own sales day that is striving to keep consumers attention focussed on just how important small businesses are to their community.

THe second annual Small Business Saturday fell on November 26th this year and a quick look at the Facebook page for this event shows that at the time of writing (Thursday 24th) showed that they had nearly two and a half million followers (considering the Canon Camera Facebook page only has half a million that's not a bad following) and possibly even more importantly Small Business Saturday was being talked about by nearly three hundred thousand of those followers.

For a more in depth look at how American Express are supporting this movement follow this link to the American Express site.

With news this week that the ARA and NRA are joining forces to promote small businesses on radio 9see article above) it makes me wonder whether a ground swell movement like Small Business Saturday may not have more long term benefits. Having heard this advert on the radio today my wife commented "So what they're saying is 'people work in stores' ?? Why should that inspire me to shop there?" - I have to admit that the advert did little to make me want to rush out and shop locally either. 

The image below shoes how Dan's Camera City are leveraging the Small Business Saturday concept to promote their business via Facebook, The Small Business Saturday website and their own site.

I asked Dan's Co-Owner Mike Woodland how the event panned out for them and he said 

"Well, it's tough to say (how business was effected). we had a drop in sales this Black Friday weekend, which we somewhat expected with more competition in the area, more people shopping online, etc... We did have people coming in using their AMX cards, so we know it drove some biz, but hard to put a number on it. We ramped it up into an "event day" with a radio remote, local elected officials came out, etc.... It made for a nice atmosphere, and customers who value what we do showed up. I suspect we would have been down more had we not participated like we did. I think the key is to find a means to help people justify shopping local. Reminding them of the benefits lets them feel good about doing so, even when they might not have gotten the lowest possible price in the world..."

Finding any reason to get consumers thinking small is one we should get behind. Maybe the ARA could be convinced to put some energy towards starting this initiative in Australia in conjunction with a company like American Express.