Two Ladies, One Roadside Store, and a mini MBA
Shift & Subtext is my weekly newsletter where I find and interview the unusual cases of user experience hacks in offline businesses. In this first edition, let us explore the business cycle of a tent store i.e., a makeshift store on the side of a road or alley, selling used leather jackets.?
Why this particular shop when perhaps there could be many other stores?
There was something outlandish about this whole business.?
Looking from a distance, it seemed like yet another hustle to live but the layout intrigued me. It was 2 concentric squares in a maze-like structure to direct visitors from one end across ALL the items through to the exit / restart point. But the outer layer had ￡7 jackets and the inner layer had jackets ranging from ￡30 to ￡80.
It didn’t make much sense initially and my entitled startup founder ego was hurt. I thought to myself - “how can someone make money by copying Ikea gimmicks by the roadside?” (spoiler - I got humbled later). I thought let’s stick around and actually observe.?
So, I stood at a distance and let the magic happen.?
22 visitors went into the maze and the first visitor didn’t buy anything and left. I was not surprised but the second and third visitors changed my perspective.?
The second and third visitor picked 3 expensive versions, tried them, and placed them back. Nothing to see there. And there were 3-4 more people behind them in the queue.?
Presumably, they did not want to disrupt the queue and go back to pick one of the jackets they put back and picked the next BEST one at the near end of the maze. The ￡70 one.?
And this continued for the next 4 people! By this time, I understood what was happening and wanted to see more of this tactic. But the ladies had more than just a tactic, they had a full-fledged strategy!
One of the owners then brought in a new set of jackets and placed them at the beginning of the maze. This got me thinking - “what is even happening? If people are buying towards the end, why place the nicer jackets at the beginning?”. A few minutes later, the first person came back to the shop. And bought the FIRST jacket which was ￡80 (the most expensive one).?
I have had enough surprises for the day so I decided to ask the owners some questions after pleasantries (I am not that shallow, come on). Some of the questions were -
“Before you were born, but this started as a hobby. I wanted to collect a few so I went door-to-door asking people if they had unused leather jackets which I could buy for cheap. I had no intention of selling them. But there came a time when all I had was this and desperately needed money so I had to sell all I had.”
“The ￡7 jackets are not the best quality and are suitable for specific occasions. The ￡80 are made of really good quality leather. I don’t want to sell something for a high price if it won’t last long. It’s nothing that big. A lot of our customers come back so we make sure they get what they couldn’t find on their first visit.”
“Not so long. We had a couple of jackets gone missing and we felt that we needed a way to ensure it doesn’t happen again. This helped us keep an eye on the jackets and also helped the customer buy the right jackets.”
I feel like I am saying “I proposed to my girlfriend and here’s what it taught me about B2B sales” with this edition. But this one interaction made me think differently about my own business, thought process, and more.?
A small non-established business run by 2 people had so much insight into their customers that most well-established businesses struggle to gather.?
This unnamed store run by 2 wonderful people made me think about customer experience more than anything. It even is one of the driving factors for me to explore and write about the psychology behind real-world business practices over digital ones.?