Wistful for what does not, cannot remain the same
Susan Dunlap, MA
Communications Leader ? Employee Engagement | Internal/External Communications | Crisis & Executive Communications | Speechwriting | Marketing & Advertising | Content Creation
Today's news of Xerox's intended acquisition of Lexmark has left me wistful for my #Lexmark days. Lexmark, a former #IBM company headquartered in Lexington, Ky., was a stellar employer and one of the best places I've worked for a host of reasons.
Things do not -- and cannot -- remain the same, but this doesn't make us miss places, people or situations any less.
When I accepted my position in international marketing with Lexmark in 1998, one of the first things I did in my new hometown was visit the #JPeterman Company Store, made internationally famous by the #Seinfeld comedy series. J. Peterman, both the entrepreneur and the company, are still around, although the retailer now moves its merchandise strictly through catalogs and online. This can't replace the experience of walking into the store and seeing, in person, the noted horseman's dusters and other curious finds.
I miss product types that are no longer around as much as I miss some stores. Case in point: It wasn't all that many years ago that an ice cream option was available to pretty much anyone who wanted it -- "it," being brick ice cream. Said ice cream was formed into a long rectangle, often the size of a quart of milk or a block of Velveeta cheese. The ice cream-maker then hollowed out the center of the block into a desired shape and filled it with a color-contrasting ice cream. At Christmas, this might be a red Santa, a green bell or a yellow star. At Valentine's Day, maybe a red heart or pink Cupid's arrow. For St. Patrick's Day, a green shamrock. Year-round, you could find versions with a birthday candle. The blocks were then sliced into about half-inch pieces and individually wrapped and sold -- thus, the bricks. The bricks saved someone from having to dip ice cream, and the design in the middle punched up the festiveness that's, well, the soul of ice cream. Used to be, consumers could find brick ice cream at the grocery, at least seasonally. That dropped off, but bricks could still be ordered through local dairies. This year, I've looked online and have called around to specialty bakeries and creameries, but no luck. The bricks I'd brought in years past from the Schwan food delivery service is no longer an option either, as Schwan -- more recently known as Yelloh -- has gone out of business.
Adding to this sense of separation is bingeing on holiday movies. Take Miracle on 34th Street, with its plot centered on someone hired as Santa at Macy's New York City store on 34th Street. This reminds me of the dry goods stores that were around when I was a child. Also vanished: Bricks-and-mortar places such as Western Auto, S&H Green Stamps, Sears & Roebuck. More recently: Marshall Field's, Circuit City and Tower Records.
I'm not gonna lie - I miss these retailers. Give anyone long enough, and they will probably experience similar loss and longing.
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The early memories we attach to retail seemingly evolves into a notion of the best ways to go about BtoC. Of course, this is not necessarily the case, but in our hearts and minds, it could get no better than when those places, selling those products, and in such-and-such way, upheld the standard.
There's nothing to be done about the longing, really, but one thing I can do is puzzle through how those ice cream bricks were hollowed out. Then, I can try and make my own.
I'll let you know how it turns out.
Happiest of holidays.
Online Communities and Collaboration Strategist at Start Early
2 个月The house I spent the first two decades of my life in is now gone, part of an industrial facility. The manufacturing plant where I got my first job out of college is also gone, somewhere under a Charlotte Airport runway when the airport expanded. When you think of all the businesses, structures, and people that have ever existed, anything that gets remembered for more than a few generations is an extremely lucky exception, not the rule. Kansas says we are all just dust in the wind. I think it's more like we are all just a brief wind in the dust (says someone who still hangs onto an early Lexmark prototype laptop).
Marketing Manager at Green Nature Marketing & I Supply Company
2 个月Your article has me waxing nostalgic on some retailers and products from my own past. Namely, Mervyns department store comes to mind, and RISO photocopy machines, with their mindblowingly quick feeds and inky prints. On the ice cream note, I remember well a Thrifty drug store (evidently, the brand was acquired by Rite Aid), in my hometown shopping mall. They had a small but legendary ice cream offering, with a very specific mechanical, cylindrical scoop. An elderly gentleman worked the ice cream counter. He could always be found there, and he created a bit of a reputation anf following among locals. His presence was a hearkening back to the days of five-and-dime stores.