paul smith's Snaps & Bytes e-home
April 2000
Question 1) The World Wide Web.
An invaluable business tool, reflecting the communolution* which is reaching into all our lives at the beginning of the third Millennium. Or just a great way to see Porn?
Discuss.
Much is being made of the internet-based global market place these days. I accept it's splendid to have an on-line 'shop window', which lets people from undiscovered South American tribes deep in the rainforests of Equador swoon at your range of PC options. But will they really be typing in their Amex Gold Card numbers next to your shopping trolley icon? Most of the Indies readers, like that unique retailing couple in Royston Vasey, have a local shop, for local people. One big advantage you have over the 'net is that in your shop, visitors can handle the precious things. As Jeramy Clarkson once commented about the WWW, who would buy a car without driving it first?
Hence the Internet is great for certain types of trade, for example, anyone who's selling a commodity item as cheaply as possible with the tiniest of overheads. Or a unique, totally niche product, like Furby Hookers (www.fishdot.org/furby). In the big e-book of winners and losers, I assume mail order firms are going to be the real sufferers when every home and business is hooked to the 'net. The cost of production and distribution of a big fat catalogue puts them at a big fat disadvantage to the fast adapting net species. What can they offer that e-tailers can't? Not much. How can they survive? By evolving faster than their peers. What can you offer the discerning shopper that on-line boutiques can't? A friendly face, advice, technical backup, personal service and a cup of tea, for a start. How can you survive? By doing what you've always done, just better. I might buy a CD or Game by phone or phone-line, but I've big reservations about buying a complex PC system that way. It's not all doom and gloom for the console boys and girls either. Shopping in a hobby for millions. They call it Retail Therapy. The immediacy of a spontaneous purchase is something no web-site can offer. In a shop you see a thing, you like the thing, you buy the thing, you take the thing home, rip off the cellophane and use it. On-line, you see a grainy picture of a thing, you wonder if its exactly as described, you take a chance and buy the thing, you wait two to three days to receive the thing… I don't know about you, but to suffer all that uncertainty, the thing would have to be a whole lot cheaper than I could find it locally.
If, after all my reassuring, you're still worried about the effect of the Internet on your business, try charging shoppers in your store a-penny-a-minute while they browse and see how much they warm to you.
*From Communications revolution. Some day the OED people are going to accept one of my new words, and when that happens, you saw that word here first folks.
I appear to have left my sweary period! 512 words. I hope this is ok Dale and that you don't mind me pinching all your ideas from the 'welcome to the February issue of Indie' box. Ta.
Paul