Rob’s charisma

Learning Launch design tool

Lucas Medina

Design Thinking for Innovation

Challenge

Selection

Application

In my town there is a small shop of many years to which we want to lend a hand.  The owner is Rob, a friendly guy who knows the whole town and likes talking to the  neighbors very much and it seems that they do too. He and two other employees run  the store where they sell many types of products. However, in recent years his sales  have fallen because new companies have arrived and Rob does not know how to  adapt to the new competition. Rob is a tough nut to crack to deal with changes. It has  too many products, many of them sell poorly because they are not current, but Rob  does not want to get rid of them. He says “they are slow selling, but people like it.”

Another problem that Rob has and why sales have fallen is when it comes to charging  because he stays talking to customers for a long time and slows down work, and  some customers who want a quick purchase become desperate. Plus, it’s so chaotic  and disorganized that a new customer always has to call an employee to find the  product he’s looking for.

By establishing our key assumptions, after carrying out a preliminary study of the  market, we agree that the sector to which the store is exposed cannot vary much,  but the image, distribution, experience and scale of the store could be improved,  focusing on the products that most They sell and leave those who cannot compete  with other companies. In addition, Rob must be relocated, to speed up customer  charges.

Because we have strong competition and limited time, we selected the Learning  Launch design tool to do quick tests to verify that our hypotheses are on the right  track and convince Rob that the changes can be good.

To convince Rob that many of his products are not relevant, we put these at the  entrance of the store very striking, to see if customers are interested in them. Then we  made a reorganization of the shelves by type of product, ordering them and leaving  more space between them and with posters that indicate what type of product you  have. On the other hand, we placed Rob as stocker and specific manager to say  the deals of the day on the street, leaving the other workers in charge of charging  customers.

To differentiate ourselves from the competition, we developed test stands with four  types of new products, local food products, foreign food products, cleaning products  and pet products. At this stand Rob would be receiving feedback from customers  about what they would like to buy the most.

Insight

Approach

The elaboration of quick tests confirmed the hypotheses. The products placed at the  entrance did not interest either new or old customers. Proving to Rob that it’s not that  they sell slow, they just don’t sell.

Organizational improvement was frustrating for old customers, but improved  acceptance for new ones, who no longer had to alert workers to find products,  slowing down their other duties. Additionally, we found that removing Rob from the  box improved billing speed by helping customers who just wanted a quick purchase.

On the other hand, the new tests revealed that many people in the town would like  organic and local products, something that helped us to improve the focus of the  store and make it competitive.

However, many of the customers after completing their purchase stay to talk to Rob,  because he has an amazing charisma. This is the best business value and its strong  point to enhance that the store has and that went unnoticed. For this reason we think  of adapting a chill-out area outside the store, to promote a lively atmosphere and  improve the recruitment of new customers. All this, opened the eyes to Rob accepting  that these changes can be productive and would not change their functionality in the  business.

This design process could have been improved using the storytelling design tool,  to get a better understanding of the store, the neighborhood and especially Rob,  who was the key. Making him understand the importance of adapting, which has its  difficulties, but a good reward.

Lucas Medina

Design Thinking for Innovation

