Driving through Houston, Texas is like navigating a sea of retail and restaurants. Store after store, mall after mall dot the horizon and beyond. For those small, independently owned retail shop owners, surviving the Tsunami-like wave of big box and big name retailers becomes almost too much of a fight to win.
Yet, according to a recent report in the Houston Chronicle (David Kaplan, Marketing Section, "Off the Retail Grid", Sunday, December 5, 2010), there are a number of small shop owners surfing the wild sea of retail right along with those big name stores. How are they doing it? They find unique, effective, and low cost ways to market to the masses.
Houston is Ripe with Opportunity
Houston is the fourth largest city for population in the U.S. and is the largest in the southern U.S. and the state of Texas. The population for 2009 was at 2,257,926 (HoustonTX.gov). In terms of business and industry opportunities in this giant city, Houston ranked number two for the number of Fortune 500 headquarters by Fortune magazine in 2010. It also was ranked number three in the U.S. for jobs by Forbes.com, and ranked number one on Fortune’s "100 Fastest Growing" list in 2010.
With so many people with money to spend, opening retail in Houston seems to be a given when hoping for success. Retailers, especially independent owners, still have to market, market, and market even with such prime location, location, location.
Out of the Box Marketing
The retail store owners interviewed for the Houston Chronicle article listed several unique ways they market their independently owned shops. Most of these are located in lower traffic areas where parking is better and shoppers don’t have to battle the hundreds of cars traditionally found in the bigger shopping malls around town.
Other marketing ideas that have been effective include:
- Dynamic web sites that list products, location, hours open, and contact information.
- Social media outlets like Facebook.
- The stores take part in neighborhood events such as holiday shopping festivals.
- The owners go the extra mile to be friendly and serve the customer with quality and unique items that may not be found in the big retail stores.
- The retailers also hold their own events and serve food and wine.
- They also collaborate with other retailers and have their items for sale on other shop floors.
Competition is the Name of the Retail Game
With over two million people in one city, there would appear to be little competition and a "if a retail shop is opened, people will come" attitude. It is actually the complete opposite. There is so much competition that anyone can find anything in a city like Houston.
Retailers compete on product, pricing, delivery, service, and support. There are places in Houston that have Starbucks coffee shops facing each other across the street. What keeps people coming into all of those coffee shops? A large size of a specialty coffee drink can cost up to $5 for one drink. Nonetheless, throughout the day, all of the coffee stores have lines of people ordering lots of coffee.
Finding effective ways to compete, such as offering a unique but quality product line at reasonable prices. then finding extraordinary ways to market can help build a successful business regardless of whether the store is a big box or a neighborhood gift shop.
