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Vince Lombardi was a famous American football coach who won five championships in the 1960s and the first two superbowls. He operated at around the same time as Liverpool’s legendary Bill Shankly. Lombardi has a great quote attributed to him: “Quitters never win and winners never quit”. It is the sort of inspirational writing that we turn to in the face of obstacles, writes Seth Godin at the start of his book, The Dip . However, Godin says Lombardi’s advice is bad advice. “Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time,” he writes. “Most people quit. They just don’t quit successfully. In fact, many professions and marketplaces profit from quitters – society assumes you are going to quit. In fact, businesses and organisations count on it.” Godin’s book on the Dip explains that there is a certain part in any journey when you don’t seem to be making progress and you quit. The tiny minority of people who are able to push through just a tiny bit long

There are many ideas in Verghese Kurien’s autobiography I Too Had a Dream that will stir the minds of independent retailers. His is the story of how the little guy wins. Of how to work with markets to win success. Of the importance of marketing. And how to leverage advantage from your connections. Dr Kurien's achievements are remarkable. How he developed the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation in a sleepy rural town 350 miles north of Mumbai, India has lessons for independent operators in the UK today. The town Anand started supplying milk to Mumbai in the 1940s after a milk scare. An enterprising businessman Pestonjee Edulji, who owned the Polson butter factory in Anand, persuaded the British to give him the rights to supply milk to the city. Armed with the sole distribution rights, Pestonjee first created big demand for Anand milk and second exploited the farmers who produced it. The British were happy with the better milk supplies and Pestonjee became ve

The first book by Michael Pollan that I read was called the Food Rules and could be summarised in seven words: Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly Plants. His latest book Cooked is a banquet of ideas with lavish digressions and an amazing cast of real life characters as he explores how people cook with fire, with water, with air and with earth. “People call things cooking today that would roll their grandmother in her grave,” food industry market researcher Harry Balzer tells Pollan. “Like heating up a can of food or microwaving a frozen pizza.” And this idea is why local shop owners find themselves in the food business. Balzer goes on to say: “A hundred years ago chicken for dinner meant going out and catching, killing, plucking and gutting a chicken. Do you know anyone who still does that? It would be considered crazy! Well that’s exactly how cooking will seem to your grandchildren. Like sewing or darning socks-something people used to do when they had no other choice. Get over i

In 2004 Dieter Brandes leaked the secrets of Aldi’s success in his book, Bare Essentials , that is now available on Amazon for an amazing £196.90 a copy (it goes up and down) or maybe in an e-book format for a fraction of that price. (There is talk of a new English edition soon.) Don’t buy the book because you want to emulate Aldi as it is too late for that. But do make sure you read it if you want to be a better retailer. This is every bit as good as Sam Walton’s Made in America. Brandes was a top manager with Aldi for 14 years and marvels at how this secretive company’s simple formula was so widely misunderstood by competitors. The formula for success was a surprise for its founders, too. But Karl and Theo Albecht were astute business people who quickly recognised how the money was made and then kept the discipline. Put simply, the secret to making money is to stock a tight core range and sell lots of every product. While Walmart sells 100,000 items, its average turnover per

If you earn your living in the retail industry the possibility that the business that you’re in will still exist in two, five and 10 years is very slim, says Doug Stephens, US retail expert in the first line of his new book The Retail Revival . “Sorry for the buzzkill,” he adds. “But it’s true.” Fizzing with ideas, this book is the start of a journey. Stephens tackles all of the issues that you’ve heard about, such as big data and showrooming and puts them into context. In a chapter entitled The Destination is You he discusses how mobile phones open up the possibility that big brands will find shoppers wherever they go. In the future as a customer is about to enter your shop, big brands could push promotions towards them and your competitors, like Tesco Express, could try and poach their business with a home delivery offer. Sam Walton’s reputation as a genius of retail comes under close scrutiny from Stephens. He argues that demographic changes lay behind the success

“Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push – in just the right place – it can be tipped,” writes Malcolm Gladwell at the end of his breakthrough book, The Tipping Point . It is a great read for retailers who puzzle why their shoppers do one thing and politicians do another. Or why some marketing sticks and some sure fire products stall. Gladwell is a journalist who tells great stories. In this book he talks about the success of Airwalk when the west coast US footwear maker rose from sales of $16 m in 1993 to $175m in 1997. And then bombed… What went wrong? Gladwell interviewed former president Lee Smith. Airwalk made a critical mistake, he said. “We had a segmentation strategy where the small core skate shops – the 300 boutiques around the country who really created us – had a certain product line that was exclusive to them...” And then they stopped doing that… Smith was asked by his category manager what h

“Have you ever heard the story of Joshie the giraffe?” ask Matthew Dixon, Nick Toman and Rick Delisi at the start of The Effortless Experience , a book that spells out how to win customer loyalty. It goes like this. Joshie is the property of a little boy who stayed with his family at a Ritz-Carlton hotel in Florida. After the holiday, Joshie’s owner discovered his toy was missing and to calm him down his parents told him that perhaps Joshie had simply taken an extended vacation. So what did the housekeeping staff at the Ritz-Carlton do after finding Joshie? They created a photo album with the giraffe lounging by the pool, relaxing on the beach, and making new friends with other stuffed animals. And then they sent Joshie back with the photo album and some other swag. This is the sort of story that customer service directors love. It is also a perfect example of what not to base your service strategy on, Dixon and his team assert. Based on detailed surveys with more than 97,000