A Cautionary Tale from WalMart

How clean is too clean? When it comes to assortment that can be a tough call it seems. A recent article in Advertising Age (http://adage.com/article?article_id=144883) hints that Walmart might have crossed the line that separates too clean from clean enough with its Project Impact—an initiative whose aim was to clean up the clutter and come across more like a Target.

On an anecdotal level I was surprised several months ago when a distributor told me that Walmart no longer cares so much about traffic—“they have so many people going through those stores they don’t need to add items with the purpose of increasing traffic.” That’s the kind of thing you hear when a store starts to lose touch with the people who keep it in business—though admittedly I didn’t hear it directly from anyone at Walmart.

What the Ad Age article reveals is that Walmart just took too much stuff off the shelves—and off the floor, out of the aisles, everywhere it was heaped and jumbled. It provided the clearer sight lines that so please the customers, but resulted in just less darn stuff to sell, which might have something to do with the down trends of the last four quarters. So, being that retail is an evolving science, they’re trucking the stuff back in.

The distribution industry’s approach to magazines over the past decade has also been in the direction of a smaller assortment, fewer titles, focus on category leaders, de-clutter the racks, and I think that Walmart’s experience might be a cautionary tale. While the small independent publications do take up room in the trucks, room on the shelves, file space on the computer system, and often produce a greater percentage of returns, what growth we have seen in magazine sales has come from the vertical interest titles. It has always seemed to me short sighted to squeeze out the source of our growth through the category management procedures that had gotten so popular. Plus, what a shopper looks for on a visit to the newsstand is selection. They might buy only one or two boating publications, for example, but they want to see what the choice is.

I’m not against neatening some racks. But let’s remember the person doing the shopping. A broader selection encourages a purchase, and cutting too close to the bone for the sake of a cleaner look won’t help the supplier, the retailer, or the customer.