We English are a nation of shopkeepers. Napoleon Bonaparte said
so.
As just such a shopkeeper, I have to say that I do love my work.
I get up early every morning to check how sales went overnight.
How many customers came in? What did they buy? Did they ask for
anything that I haven?t got in stock? I then check the money
?take? to confirm what?s selling well and what?s not. My shop,
by the way, is a ?open all hours? Internet enterprise.
My next joys are to replenish the shelves of my shop with fresh
products and remove any old stock. This isn?t a manual labour of
love though. It?s just a matter of visiting several wholesalers
on the ?net (the affiliate network sites) and ordering stock.
These sites offer shopkeepers like me a growing number of RSS
product feeds.
I simply select the merchants I want to do business with and the
products I want to stock. The degree of product selection
available to me depends on the way the RSS feeds have been
set-up. Sometimes, I must take every product a merchant offers
me (or none at all); often I can take a group of products from
various merchants; usually, I can opt for a specific product
with high value to my customers.
Having made my selections (of merchant and product), I download
the RSS feeds. This is an elegant process, whereby the software
checks to see if I already have the ordered products in stock at
the desired levels, fills my shelves if I haven?t, and removes
any stock that?s past its ?sell-by? date. There are no delivery
drivers to monitor; no pallet trucks to push; no returns
documentation to fill in. What?s more, my merchants do most of
the merchandising for me: offering me up-to-date photographs,
product descriptions, prices and so on, as part of their feeds.
Within an hour, I?ve re-stocked my shop with fresh, desirable
produce. Of course, that?s not the end of my joy. Oh no, the
rest of my day is spent in gleeful bookkeeping, marketing and so
on; the kind of pleasures undertaken elsewhere in retail
management. Thankfully, my wholesalers do much of the data
management for me, which makes bookkeeping easier. The suppliers
meanwhile send me special offers by email, which is akin to
entertaining sales reps. in real world shopping, I suppose.
I?ve just painted a very rosy picture of the modern English
shopkeeper. It sounds like an idyllic way to earn a living. Yet,
being an English shopkeeper largely reliant on RSS feeds does
have its frustrations.
First, too few of the big merchants have understood the power of
marketing via RSS feed and affiliation. These sluggish retail
giants, many with a long-standing presence on English high
streets, are missed by those of us with neighbourhood corner
shops. We want to pass business their way, for a small
commission. So, take note please big merchants, the costs of
setting-up and maintaining RSS feeds, and paying us small
commissions, are far outweighed by the value of increased sales.
It seems that some of the ?giants? have been caught off-guard by
the cost-effectiveness of this new technology and approach to
marketing in combination. It?s simply a matter of them
re-writing their product lists in XML and offering the coded
feeds to affiliate networks. When they do so, I suggest humbly
that they seek out networks offering small shopkeepers like me
an unlimited number of feeds at no cost, and that they avoid
studiously any ?exclusive? deals.
Some merchants are quicker to exploit new technologies than
others; that?s the way markets work. The most agile survive: the
least agile suffer. This creates an opportunity for small and
medium sized merchants who are inherently more agile than larger
competitors. We English shopkeepers, need them to master RSS
technology and affiliation quickly, to plug the gaps in the
market left by big merchants.
Recently, for example, I?ve been hunting English merchants who
can offer me affiliated RSS feeds for used and new cars. I have
also been hunting merchants capable of offering me regularly
updated RSS feeds for package holidays, jobs and real estate.
Cars, holidays, jobs and houses are just the sort of products
that would sell well in my shop, yet there are big gaps in the
market there right now.
To conclude, Napoleon was right: we English are a nation of
shopkeepers. Many, like me, love our work. To continue the
tradition, what this particular English shopkeeper needs is two
things. Additional, big merchants offering affiliated RSS feeds
with broad appeal and smaller merchants offering narrower,
deeper feeds that cater for niche interests.
About the author:
Steve Hawker is a partner at http://www.ehawker.co.uk E-mail him
at: info@ehawker.co.uk ? Steve Hawker 2005. All rights reserved.
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