The trump cards for independent opticians
Milan was the setting for yesterday’s T'occhi di Design event, a meeting promoted by Nico-Design and LA with special guest IC!berlin, which was attended by the representatives of over 60 outlets in the optics sector.
Attracting considerable attention during the morning was the talk by well-known marketing expert Danilo Fatelli. He discussed the current post-crisis scenario and began a debate that closely examined the various possibilities and opportunities available to independent opticians for best coping with future economic prospects.
The crisis that peaked between 2008 and 2009, but now seems to be giving way to the first signs of recovery, affected all sectors on two different levels: economic, with a real downturn in revenues, and psychological, with the consequent shift in the trends towards change that had emerged during the early years of the past decade.
Optics distributors must be able to grasp the real needs of their customers and, even more importantly, those of potential customers. Basically, there are three factors that affect consumer choices today: the strong evolution of fashions and trends, a variety of social and cultural interests, and the increasingly strong entry of social networks and the Internet.
Moreover, the crisis also revealed that consumption was split precisely between the values of convenience and the choice of top-level products. Within this new context, the differentiation that is available to outlets concerns innovation, quality and personalization.
Before proceeding, at this point Fatelli asked a question: “is it impossible to return to pre-crisis sales levels because consumers are not prepared to buy or because distribution is unable to grasp the new requirements?”
This led to a detailed analysis of all distribution models.
The chains seem to have exhausted their inclination for development (certain cases excepted) and the mall, the preferred location of recent years, has lost its ability to attract.
To date, the function of Groups has been pure commercial intermediation but they do not have organizational structures that are capable of providing services and assistance. So, unless they revise their approach to customers, their future is uncertain.
If they are to survive, independent opticians, who officially control 50% of the network of specialist outlets, must consider a radical repositioning of their strategies, trying to rise above the taboos that have conditioned them to date (collections, prices, profession) and take a new direction toward establishing different methods of relating to consumers, and new areas of collaboration.
This should be the starting off point identified by Fatelli: rethink core business, identify the elements to be transferred to real and potential customers through a dense communication and relational network, and move from standardized universal proposals to a commercial policy marked by a one-to-one relationship with the customer. Horizons should be widened to encompass a more strategic view of outlet positioning by evaluating and choosing the range of products based on the targeted catchment area and by levering communication. Another strong point that distributors of specialist optics should aim at is the optimization of the commercial tools available and their own abilities and professionalism in particular.
In other words, at yesterday’s debate Fatelli suggested that opticians should rethink their relationships with consumers and competitors by exploiting the strong points available to them, such as the choice of positioning, the identification of targets and the search for new opportunities for collaborating with manufacturing companies.
