Footwear Insight

34 • Footwear Insight ~ September/October 2018 footwearinsight.com and fans that come in to shop on football Sundays." — Rueda PEOPLE POWER Whether it's seasoned pros with degrees for days or fresh faces who bring a buzz or a savvy mixture of both, four-peaters agree: Having the kind of people on staff who make shoppers want to come back is critical. "This is our 68th year and my dad, Stan, had a philosophy of being a high-touch business, of making sure the customer walked out with a smile on his or her face and their feet feeling good. We still say, anybody can sell a pair of shoes, but did you make a friend today?" — Sajdak "We truly provide the most complete footwear and foot analysis service available anywhere. Being staffed with board certified pedorthists and orthopedic shoe technicians, [and have an] onsite lab to produce custom shoes, orthotics and modifications, gives us the edge needed to survive in today's retail environment. Even our part-time employees are trained in biomechanics, anatomy and footwear construction and modifications." — Rueda "It's about having a really caring staff. We've been able to really develop our staff over time and that's pretty rare. They're well trained and comfortable and very emphatic people and they're able to sit down and really evaluate someone's physical needs and abilities and get them something stylish. That knowledge base is hard to reproduce." — Chandler REACH OUT When you have what the customer needs, let them know. (And make sure you're tailoring your approach to their needs.) "With consumers needing product at a speed similar to the internet, we have put processes in place to speed up the delivery of product from store to store and/or store to customer. We've pushed ourselves to [aim for] 100 percent fulfill- ment [on special orders] and we have two trucks running daily among the nine stores. We developed this foolproof form and about a year in it really has ratcheted up the availability. And we've added text messaging to our consumers when their product is ready. For the shoes we're moving back and forth, we have about a 70 percent pick-up rate and it used to be 50 percent. Clearly texts are what people want." — Jim Dament, GM of retail, Schuler Shoes, nine stores in the greater Minneapolis area "With hard to find sizes, like a nine double wide, we have tablets on hand so any employee can show them what we're stocking in that, and we keep track so that if we're a little short on a particular size we can add more shoes to that cat- egory. We also leverage that database. We can target people with very focused, very targeted mailings based on their size and width, with a postcard that has the full-price shoes we're stocking." — Tony Thomas, president and owner, Modern Shoe, Provo, UT WORK WITH EXPERTS Your customers come to you because you're the experts. When it comes to improving customer service, why not do the same? "We use Harry Friedman training [from The Friedman Group] for all new hires, and when needed for refresher our estab- lished staff members." —Tony Miroballi, co-owner, Miroballi Shoes in Orland Park and Wheaton, IL "We hired an outside consultant to work for us for a couple of years. He developed a proprietary 10-step selling program, which we use to this day, as well as a sales goal and reward system for perfor- mance at or above the established goals." — Breton Woldruff's Footwear & Apparel Turnpike Comfort Footwear Chandler's Walk Shoppe Tops for Shoes With consumers needing product at a speed similar to the internet, we have put processes in place to speed up the delivery of product from store to store and/or store to customer. Jim Dament, Schuler Shoes

• Cover