I have identified at least one key area that needs improving immediately if Adams wants to be around in another two years.  It is an improvement that would result in a gain in profits, brand strength and create the foundations for a much longer term strategy of sustainability.

The fact is that the High Street is dying.  Yes, there are lots of jobs still in there but just because the High Street is dying, it doesn’t mean companies need to lay off staff and close down high street stores – at least not if they broaden their strategy to include all avenues of selling.  Yes, you guessed it, you know where this is going, its heading online…

But Adams have got a website, you say.  Yes, they have, an old fashioned one.  In much the same way that older retail stores have been superceded by 7 new ‘concept’ stores in the last year – all now performing beyond expectations – the same principal must be applied to the company’s website. It needs a facelift, a remake, a new concept.

Without seeing exact sales figures its hard to say how successful the Adams website has been in its ucrrent form but isnt that somehwat irrelevant?  The company went into administration so something about the company wasn’t working right.  I believe one of those aspects was the online offering.  Lets look at it from the perspective of winning NEW customers.  Let’s face it, babies haven’t stopped being born and children haven’t stopped needing clothes have they? Recession or not, they’re still coming! The market is still there despite the change in climate but as well as that, the increasing convenience to consumers of researching and ordering products on the internet coupled with the decline in actual footfall in high street locations also have to be considered.

Adams arguably have one of the biggest names in the UK for baby and children’s clothing yet why is it that a brand as widely respected as Adams had to go into administration? Really, strip away the facts and the accusations relayed squarely at the recession and think about recent consumer trends.  Online sales increased by 50% in 2008, high street sales declined and will continue to decline.  So lets put things into perspective, if more shoppers are going online, and lets say a proportion of those shoppers were looking for childrens clothing, then why did they not buy from Adams?

Or, more appropriately, why did they not buy from Adams but instead bought from their competitors?

Reason 1: They couldn’t find Adams.

Their are a heap of studies about that state that when users shop on the internet, the first port of call is either their ‘pre-packed’ internet homepage or google.  The interesting thing about internet homepages is that unless your page loads up at the microsoft or yahoo pages, almost every other ’search’ feature on an internet homepage will use google to run the search.  What that means is that a good 80% of users looking for goods on the internet will end up starting their buying cycle (research stage) at google.

I stated in an article last week that retailers without an online presence were 30% more likely to go bust and I can’t help but feel like this was one of the major aspects of why Adams went in to administration a couple of months ago.

Here’s how it played out in practice. I’ve just ran a few quick searches for things I’d buy for my child (and I always shop online) on google and been thrown up a list of results.  I searched for ‘baby clothes‘, its pretty generic but its where I would start myself.  Ok, so the results popup and low and behold, on the page, if I count them all up, I can see 24 baby clothing shops (websites) and guess what? Adams isn’t one of them. Now imagine this as the hottest retail street in the UK and then imagine 24 other baby shops on that street and you’re not there.  Ok, so 24 other shops you might say, isn’t that a bit saturated? Why would I want to be in a high street with 24 other baby shops – their would be price wars and all sorts!  Ok, so this is a valid point but here’s the thing, of those 24 shops, only 4 are recognised brand names:
Mamas & Papas
Marks & Spencer
Next
Mothercare

Now I’d bet my house that if John Shannon, the new owner of Adams, took a look at that last paragraph and saw that I ran that search and saw 4 of his major competitors whilst he was nowhere in sight, he’d be on the phone to his marketing/web design team to say, ‘why are we not there?’   I’d also bet that if Adams was one of the websites that I saw in that list, I’d chance to visit the website because I trust Adams, I trust and respect its brand which has been a figure of my high streets all my life!  I trust it because of my age but what of the new generation that are beginning their product research on the internet?  They don’t really know Adams historically, and the worse thing is, Adams arent even there to make a point – they have no visibility and therefore won’t retain this brand trust unless they start to consider the internet as a serious medium for brand survival.

This is simply commercial suicide to not take this seriously.  The other 20 websites I was presented with were small in scale compared to the might of the Adams brand yet I bet 50% of them were generating more revenue from their website than Adams did from theirs.  And the thing of it is, there’s absolutely no reason why Adams can’t get in on this action…

1. High St. shop leases and rents have been steadily rising over the past decade on the back of the property boom but now that our pockets are being hit and we all re-assess our expenditure, many of these shops are closing down because the costs are simply too high.  People aren’t spending as much in the High St. as they were 18 months ago whilst sales via the internet continue to grow.  How much money could you save if you gave up your retail premises and moved to a government-funded industry park and started work via the internet?
2. Online spending has increased by 30% in 2008 and research by Forrester Research expects this to increase by a further 11% in 2009 – despite the downturn. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures show the total value of sales fell 0.8 per cent compared with December 2007. That compares with a fall of 1.4 per cent recorded by the BRC’s Retail Sales Monitor published last week.
3. Shopping online is safer now than it ever has been with more complex security measures and prominent ‘hacker safe’ credentials appearing on 95% of the world’s ecommerce stores.  On top of that, credit card companies cover any fraudulant transactions made over the internet which makes purchasing goods via credit card over the internet 100% secure.
4. In this grim and depressing weather, why would you want to go to the town centre and carry home 3 or 4 bags worth of shopping when you can do it all from the warmth of your home – when you like – and have it delivered to you the next day?
5. Selling online grants you an opportunity to connect with your customers on a level that simply is not possible in traditional retail.  Online selling allows you to maintain constant contact with your customers via email or social networking groups such as MySpace or Facebook by simply integrating the data capture method into the actual order process.  With this [not so secret] weapon you can build up a healthy customer base that you can contact at the push of a button with your latest offers.

Another great display of the power and allure of taking your business online is yesterday’s formal announcement by the Barclays brothers, owners of the Shop Direct Group (littlewoods), that they had bought the Woolworths brand and were going to turn the whole operation into an online-based seller.  All I thought of when I read that piece was ‘why didn’t woollies do that sooner?‘

With 800 stores nationwide and retail sales falling year on year with the online outlook getting better and better every year, why didn’t woolworths just sell 50% of their shops and re-invest the money into a contact-centre like setup where orders could be fulfilled from their online website and a warehouse? Why did it take the company to go into administration before they realised their mix wasn’t right?  Perhaps they were putting too many eggs in their distribution basket, hoping that other companies who were trading online who were buying from them (zavvi.co.uk) would continue to grow and keep them afloat.  I can’t help but feel that woolies missed the boat last time round and this new announcement to bring woolies back online is both a show of fortitude for the online selling industry and a good move from the barclays brothers.

“We’ve got high hopes and big ideas for the Woolworths we want to bring back to you!” is what the www.woolworths.co.uk website read today, let’s see if they mean it when they actually launch the website.  Let’s see if they really do get it right…