Customer Reviews

Winning At Retail: Developing a Sustained Model for Retail Success

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As a business student, the book "Winning at Retail" gave me effective and simple strategies for understanding how to evaluate and critique retail concepts. In their accessible text, Ander and Stern manage to distill complex and constantly-evolving retail concepts into an intuitive model that will guide readers who need to quickly and intelligently assess how successfully a retail concept delivers value to customers.

If you're seeking an outline for the particulars of cash-flow management, marketshare, procurement strategies etc., this book won't satisfy. Stern and Ander don't excavate details. Instead, they hover at a conceptual level and methodically reduce high-achieving retailers' major differentiating factors to a workable, comprehensible 5-point "EST-model". The authors concede immediately that no retailer can (or ought to) be strong on all points of their model, since vigor on one axis may preclude a company from muscle on another. They argue that a retail concept must prevail on at least one or two points on the EST model to secure a place among the top three retailers in a segment (which, the authors say, is how to prevent consumer neglect and ultimately, the company's failure). The strengths of the EST model are both its intuitiveness to the reader and its simple construction.

The tome is pithy and easy to read. Stern and Ander sustained my attention throughout by using a familiar -- yet diverse -- set of retailers to illustrate the models. I encourage any reader who wants to appreciate what differentiates compelling retailers that stay relevant to consumers from the many that end their days in "the black hole of retail" to read Winning at Retail immediately.

Montgomery Ward, Woolworth's and Pets.com stumbled into irrelevancy before they knew what hit them. Authors and retail consultants Willard Ander and Neil Stern explain what went wrong and tell retailers how to stay alive and thrive. They prescribe their theory, called "Est," as in the superlative suffix. Be the best, they say, in assortment (biggest), price (cheapest), customer service (easiest), speed of service (quickest) or fashion (hottest). Being "pretty good" at everything no longer works. The abundance of choices in today's transparent, digital marketplace has spawned information-overloaded, fickle, demanding customers. The authors tend to generalize about what good companies are doing right rather than describing how also-ran retailers might turn things around, but there is plenty of advice here for those who are willing to take it. We recommend this glib pep talk of a book - if for no other reason than to jolt retailers out of believing they're doing everything possible to keep customers coming back.

The same retailers win year after year, Wal-mart, Target, Home Depot,Amazon while the rest barely hang on. Winning at retail tells retailers what they need, to be the _ est. Biggest, Cheapest, Quickest, Hottest. Customers have more choice and more options. The build it and they will come approach of most retailers is no longer enough. Retailers need to have the right product in the right place for the customer, or the customer will move on. Just like Good to Great, every retail company should check their strategy against Winning at Retail. Most strategies wouldnt pass, the best ones will.

I bought 3 books on retail strategy. This one is definitely the book on reviewing and assessing various retail businesses. To me, the most valuable element of the book is the Est model. Simple, clear and practical. The only thing that I found not so clearly explained is the role of quality. The authors touch the problem but they don't really explore it.
Zbyszek

When thinking about how to win in retail, there must be millions of thoughts and ideas. All of your ideas will be made more effective when they are directed in one focal point. But is your focal point relevant in the retail world? This book points to 5 focal points that matter.

For example, this book helped me settle into a Easy-Est strategy for starting up a Next-Generation Pharmacy. In this context, both The Wellness Revolution and Blown to Bits complemented the Easy-Est strategy.

This book finally can show a retailer how to set their strengths apart from other retailers. Many retail books talk about setting yourself apart but this book shares the FIVE "EST"'s that you can be, like:

biggEST
cheapEST
fastEST
hottEST

etc

You can probably be 2 but not or 5 of them. Great history of stores that do welll. Even though the book talks in big names (like Target which is HottEST as in up to the minute designer fashions at good prices) a small retailer can do this. You jst can't THINK small.

One bad part.......If you read this and think it will be like a motivation seminar where you'll absorb this and it will happen-well, you're wrong. You need to do a lot of things different starting tomorrow morning. the same old drab store with the same old drab employees won't hack it.

You decide. But if you want to change this book will give you direction. Then go read "The E-Myth revisited"

David Geller

Gives solid and profound knowledge about the secrets of most succesful retailers. The authors give strong analysis of retail business as well as structured theoretical model, which can be applied to all retail business' - from fast food up to pharmaceuticals.
Recommended to all the retailers, strugling in the "black hole" as well as suppliers who want to understand retail models better and maybe, in some cases, to help make them better as well.

"Be the Best at Something".
There you go, that's the whole book.
I just saved you a few bucks and a few hours.

The EST model for retail is an over-simplified version of a very big idea - that as a retailer, you have to hold a position in your customers' mind. Being the EST is a very important part of that (This book ignores the equally important aspect of chosing a niche, identifying your target market, etc).

I really enjoyed this book. A lot of time is spent building up the concept and helping the retailer understand why EST is so important, which was a bit over-kill for me as I could see the logic immediately, but I think it would be helpful to a lot of people. I do wish more time had been spent on the individual EST's, as I found myself craving a lot more information about the EST that I chose for my store.

The book was shipped quickly and arrived in the described condition. thank you for the fast and easy transaction.