Can Millers find the old magic?

It is interesting that the mere talk of Millers being able to sell off its discount variety operations of Go Lo and Crazy Clark's fired up the share price around 20 per cent in the first week of November. Apparently the buyers of the 11 million shares that changed hands during the week were prepared to forgive a full year loss of $105 million in the belief that is was mostly to do with the 80 discount variety stores. Twenty four of those most on the nose have now been closed.
Take out the discount variety stores and what you've got left is Millers Fashion Club and Katies - plus a few other brands in the budget clothing category. It's one thing to be given an unfettered run at the fashion market but quite another to make it profitable.
Millers was at its best when it was growing like Jack's beanstalk with the Fashion Club.
It had perfected the relatively unique the art of capturing customer loyalty. Each purchase gave the customer the apparel equivalent of frequent flyer points and the company kept in touch through a newsletter and personal mail follow up.
The question is, can Millers paddle back into the middle of the river after having been stuck in the mud among the variety store mangroves?
Like a number of its competitors, Millers has been pushing towards sourcing its own merchandise - basically to cut out the middle man. I have some doubt as to whether that is the most economical way of operating now. Millers was making good money when it bought from the likes of Paul Hotz' Tajura. Hotz was about the best budget supplier in the business. He allowed himself to be orbitally sanded on margins because he could orbitally sand his own suppliers. But when Millers bought Tajura it dispensed with the skills of Hotz and replaced them with a formal division run by a well rounded business manager. Gone was the magic ingredient of desperation from both sides that equated to the best value for money.
Sales tales
While retail sales staff in the big stores are put through training as a matter of course, it is often left to the whim of the owner of a small to bother with that time consuming task. It can seem self evident.
Think again. Many young sales assistants treat their job as an extension of how they behave at home or with their peer group. Maybe they have never been told that retail selling, especially in fashion apparel, is a theatrical craft.
To wit:
Two friends of mine had planned an October wedding in Sydney. In pursuit of visual splendour, the groom went to AG Clothing in Oxford Street Paddington to buy his outfit and the bride went to the Collette Dinnigan boutique, also in Paddington. One came home in elation, the other in misery.
His story:
The groom basically wanted a suit but he was also a soft target for a shirt, socks, shoes and belt. All the store needed to do was connect with him, enthuse, show the goods and take the money. And did they? You bet they did.
The groom arrived at the shop with his bride to be and two nieces in tow. The sales assistants drew the whole four into the deal. They listened to everybody's opinion, and threw in their own. They made it fun. They all became newest best friends. The groom bought a strikingly "different" suit and was so euphoric that he bought three shirts instead of the planned one. He walked out $1500 poorer but convinced that he had nailed it. Not only that, he returned two days later for another two shirts. After the wedding he received a congratulatory greeting card from the store. Bouquets to AG.
Her story:
The bride was on her own when she walked past Collette Dinnigan's boutique after a gym workout. She saw the dress of her dreams from the street and went in to inspect it. She immediately encountered disinterest from the sales staff and put it to down to their assumptions about her choice of wearing exercise gear in their shop.
The dress she so loved was a size small but it needed to be an extra small. She was curtly told by the sales assistants that the dress was not available in extra small. Were it not for a quick thinking manager she would have walked out the shop, unspent. A phone call revealed that there was an extra small in Melbourne. It was flown up and finessed to fit perfectly.
The bride made four visits from walk-in to The dress cost $1800. I saw the bride on her wedding day and, without doubt, the dress was worth every cent. A big pat on the back to Collette for being such a clever designer. But the downside was that the bride, in spite of being asked, would not reveal the label or source of the dress, nor will she set foot in the shop again.
I'm not trying to put the boot into Collette here, nor the sales assistants who let her down. Rather, there is a lesson to be learned. Everybody who walks into a boutique is a potential customer, no matter what they look like or how they are dressed. And every sales assistant has the chance to be a professional, to exercise the skill of communication and charm - whether they think it is warranted or not. The art of the sell has got to become automatic.
If I had to train retail sales assistants and I had plenty of money to spend on it, I'd take every one of them to Thailand department stores. Those shop assistants, mostly girls, are simply superb sales people. My repeated experience in the shirt departments has been that they loved me from the minute they set eyes on me. I always went out groaning under the weight of my purchases - but with a big smile on my face.

L & A's Belmore reprieve
I stuffed up somewhat by reporting that legendary Sydney trouser manufacturer Luigi & Anthony had closed. When I went back over my shorthand I found that it was the Belmore factory that was in the process of closing but the company is still powering on as a major importer from Fiji and China.
Luigi tells me that he has found he needs Belmore for short runs and won't totally close it after all. It now employs nine machinists, a presser, a mechanic and a dispatcher. A contract cutter calls a couple of times a week.
This niche production need is definitely on the increase throughout the trade as the high rollers in China scare buyers off with monster minimums.
Luigi also endorsed the value of Fiji as a production source for Australian menswear imports. Many companies, unable to meet Chinese minimums or put up with quality variations, depend upon Fiji. It has achieved a balance between price, quality, minimums and deliveries that suits Australia just fine.