Hey, make no mistake about it: stealing from retail stores is a big problem. And the pushback from shoppers on both sides of the Pride issue is creating problems for retail businesses trying to thread the political needle.
But the round of retail financial results we’re seeing come out over the past week or so that point to those situations as the villains in weak performances are only the latest distraction retailers have come up with to disguise the real problem: their business sucks.
For as long as anyone who follows retailing can remember companies have blamed the weather for their ills: it was too cold to sell bathing suits, it was too hot to move winter coats and, jeez, it just rained a lot and nobody wanted to leave their house to go shopping.
Every reporting season these excuses popped up and sadly if most retailers were as creative in their merchandising as they were in coming up with things to blame they might not have had those problems in the first place.
Alfred Hitchcock used to call these things MacGuffins: distractions that had pretty much nothing to do with what was really going on but served to grab viewer’s attention even if they were inconsequential to the movie’s plot.
This summer we’re seeing retail theft, LGBTQ pride promotions and all kinds of other problems, ranging from the end of student loan amnesties to high credit card debt being blamed for poor results. And again, these are all legitimate issues that are impacting business.
But not everyone’s business it seems. A whole swath of retailers including so-called “value brands like Walmart, the TJX nameplates and some others all reported solid results. So too did nameplates outside of that channel, including Abercrombie & Fitch.
And that’s the thing: if all of those problems impacting retail were truly that widespread how did many manage to buck the trend? Retail has always been about the haves and have-nots, those businesses that have their acts together and are responding to the economic environment…and those that aren’t. That’s a point once again proven with these most recent financial results.
Nobody said retail was easy and some companies are just on the wrong side of the consumer these days and have to work twice as hard to be successful. But all of them need to take responsibility for their businesses. When the CEO of Peloton says he never felt better about his business even as the company reported drops in sales, more losses, fewer subscribers and more recalls resulting in a record low stock price, you have to say this is someone who is working too hard to spin things.
The weather has been the proverbial whipping boy of retail for generations. But some companies have managed to do something about it time after time. We can now add all of these other MacGuffins to that list.
WarrensReport 