Suze Bragg

Retailing An Easier Way - Books I'd Recommend
March 2, 2007

Some friends asked that I buy them books for their birthdays. This is a common request, I'm sure, but they didn't ask for books I would read for leisure. They want books I would recommend and buy for business. This started my list of 10 retail books that I continually add to and challenge my friends to do the same.

1. Retail Business Kit for Dummies (paperback) This book is a great tool for a would-be entrepreneur thinking about starting their first retail business. It covers all the basics needed to plan, set up and manage a retail business, from writing the business plan to making the business a reality. The author makes good use of case studies which illustrate some of the retail successes and failures that he has observed.

2. Retail Management: A Strategic Approach (hardback) This book provides a balance between theory and practice, useful career information, and a comprehensive package of ancillaries. It takes a strategic approach to decision making.

3. Winning At Retail: Developing a Sustained Model for Retail Success (Hardcover) 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 wouldn't pass, the best ones will.

4. The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More (Hardcover) The author explains how in traditional retail, you have the 80/20 rule, with 20 percent of the products accounting for 80 percent of the revenue. Online, instead, he sees the "98 percent rule." Where 98 percent of all the possible choices get chosen by someone, and where the 90 percent that is only available online accounts for half the revenue and two-thirds of the profits. He also explains how filters and recommender systems that help people find what they are really looking for are crucial ingredients. Thus, in a nutshell, Anderson's theory is that mass culture is fading, and being replaced by a series of niches. Thus the subtitle of his book, "Why The Future of Business Is Selling Less of More."

5. Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?: Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing (Hardcover). This book has mixed reviews. I liked it because it was an easy read and it helped me rationalize why I wanted to change the way I thought about marketing. If you're not ready to change, don't buy this book - it'll frustrate you.

6. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (Hardcover) One of the better marketing and sales communication books I have ever read.

7. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (Paperback) By far one of my favorite books. "The best way to understand the dramatic transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life," writes Malcolm Gladwell, "is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do." Although anyone familiar with the theory of memetics will recognize this concept, Gladwell's The Tipping Point has quite a few interesting twists on the subject.

8. Internet Riches: The Simple Money-making Secrets of Online Millionaires (Hardcover) Scott Fox points out quick and easy ways to make money online, along with sharing stories of those who have done it before.

9. How to Use the Internet to Advertise, Promote and Market Your Business or Website with Little or No Money (Paperback). I just purchased this book this morning because it came highly recommended by a close friend.

10. The World Is Flat [Updated and Expanded]: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century (Hardcover). My mother-in-law gave me this book after she read it. This is an enlightened book that helps explain how the world is changing and why the Internet is not something that is a "passing fad".

I'll continue to expand on this list and would love to read your comments and feedback. If you have any books you'd recommend as well, please pass them along.

Posted by Suze Bragg on March 2, 2007 | Comments (0)