Hey, Walmart, Who’s Minding the Store?

Some changing circumstances in my life required me to venture into that magic forest of basic living considerations. I hadn’t been there in a long time.

So what’s the latest in home/office telephone equipment? I know, it’s right out of the Freshman Handbook. But it’s been many years since I was a freshman.

I went online, and Walmart was the most aggressive player in my Google search. Boy, they all but reached out of the screen and offered me a cup of coffee and a warm brownie. They have everything. Convenience, delivery, assortment, price, easy pick-up, quick response. I was ready to name Walmart the godparent of my only son.

Unfortunately for Walmart, there are shoppers who still have to go to the store. So I walked into my neighborhood Walmart Supercenter. Taking the overnight train to the far corner of the store, where the electronics are, was easy enough.

Three sales associates were sitting around in their little area, talking about whatever. One of them finally noticed me. (It was 8 a.m., and I was one of three or four shoppers in the entire store. In other words, relatively noticeable.)

“Telephones?”

He wordlessly swept his hand in a gesture that suggested, “Are you blind? They’re right in front of you.”

“No, not a cellphone. A home phone – a land line.”

He muttered something and waved two or three aisles over, hoping I wouldn’t come back and ask next for a VCR.

And there, on a few shelves, were a number of boxes from AT&T, Panasonic and VTech. Boxes had price stickers pasted over stickers, with a whole bunch of numbers assaulting me. What was what? And what did anything cost? I assumed the boxes were intended to align with the price tags on the shelves, but nothing seemed in order. Well, a lot can happen to mess up your store by 8 a.m.

So I tried to figure it out by myself before giving up. There happened to be a Staples a few doors down and a Best Buy not so far away. As I walked out, the three associates were still engaged in their conversation. Nobody seemed interested in seeing me walk away without a box under my arm.

I know Walmart has put tremendous assets into its online presentation, which not so long ago was chided as something out of the dark and dusty 2000s. So maybe that’s what functioning as a retailer has come to.

But it seems to me that as long as you still have stores, many of the old rules still apply: sightlines, clarity, merchandising display and that necessary though inconvenient thing called customer service. Nobody had to pour me a coffee or offer me a brownie. I’d have been happy with just, “Did you find what you were looking for?”

And happier still if the person had meant it.

As a journalist, writer, editor and commentator, Steve Kaufman has been watching the store design industry for 20 years. He has seen the business cycle through retailtainment, minimalism, category killers, big boxes, pop-ups, custom stores, global roll-outs, international sourcing, interactive kiosks, the emergence of China, the various definitions of “branding” and Amazon.com. He has reported on the rise of brand concept shops, the demise of brand concept shops and the resurgence of brand concept shops. He has been an eyewitness to the reality that nothing stays the same, except the retailer-shopper relationship.