Footwear Insight

thought we really needed them which made our Back-To-School season one of the best we've had in our 30-plus years in business!" — Brenda Felger, Felger's Footwear "Over the past year, a big challenge has been not having complete control over the sizes and styles in our inventory. Customers regularly see things on a display or come in for an item they've bought before and we simply have no way of getting their size. We combat that with always trying to lead them from our first interaction and doing their shopping with them as opposed to stepping back and letting them guide the process from shopping our displays… Overall, supply chain issues have been frustrating, but we viewed them as an advantage for us from the get-go, and have been able to keep our shelves full of great product and increased both our inventory and sales substantially." —Adam Griggs, So Shoe "Maintaining my core employees who have been with me over 25 years was the biggest challenge. I gave all of them new incentive commissions and raised their base pay. I also hired new part-timers to fill the gaps. We have recruited employees in person at career fairs as well. I have managed to put together an awesome team that has met the challenges. The next big challenge of course was getting the right merchandise in our store and maintaining enough inventory to meet demand. We were fortunate to have a continuous flow of merchandise since we typically order shoes 6 to 8 months in advance. We also had great help from some of our core suppliers like: Birkenstock, Ecco, Wolky, and Fluchos-Dorking. Fortunately, only a few of our suppliers have had supply chain issues. It has probably affected our website more than anything. We still have to integrate our website on Shopify. is has been a big challenge that we are working on now. Lastly, the most important thing was keeping our core audience coming back for shoes and reaching out to new clientele. We answered that by bumping up our social media presence, email blast, and offering curbside pick up from our website. We even had private shopping appointments." — Bruce T. Wesley, Wesley's Shoes "We have experienced exceptional rudeness, anger, frustration and fear from our customers. I try to explain to our team, 'it's not you.' People are really struggling with so many uncertainties. Another challenge this past year was making sure our team didn't get burned out or frustrated with our customers when they encountered people with little patience based on product delays and supply chain challenges. ose two scenarios played a major part in our ability to provide great service as supply chain delays and time frames for products to arrive made us look like the bad guys. We even had customers telling us to call Vietnam and tell them to fix the problem. Having a stern mission in place, as well as a team who buys into the mission, allows us to overcome any challenges related to delivering plus one customer service. When in doubt, we refer to the mission and ask ourselves if that interaction created a long term relationship." — Ted McGreer, Ted's Shoe & Sport "Staffing has been a challenge. As people started to return to the store we became much busier and sales help was hard to come by. We worked harder with less people and customers appreciated the effort and were kind enough to understand the challenges we faced. Staff found themselves helping multiple people at a time and we started calling this 'shoe parties.' Engaging with more than one customer sometimes benefited both the sales person and the customer. Done right, the customers would interact with one another and give advice and their opinions on what they were trying on. is created not only a fun buying experience but it was good to see people engaging with each other aer being apart for some time." — Steven Rueda, Sole Provisions "Footwear availability and honesty from the vendors has been challenging. Special ordering has never been this difficult and frustrating for us and our customers. Footwear companies have created an online ordering system, simple enough for us to understand, that shows in real time what is or is not available to order. No longer must we wait two weeks just to hear that the shoes are on backorder for two months. Our customers are willing to change the color of the shoe in order 16 • Footwear Insight ~ January / February 2022 footwearinsight.com RETAIL At your service: Felger's Footwear. Teamwork makes the dream work: Dardano's Shoes. For more information about the Gold Medal Service Awards for Outstanding Customer Service and to see a full list of the 2021 award winners, visit goldmedalserviceawards.com

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