In the past I had a client that had what I think is a brilliant philosophy about her business.  First let me tell you a bit about Bev.  She told me she started selling teas and coffees at flea markets.  In time she and her family grew the company to have two locations in her market place selling top quality kitchen accessories.  The store name was created from two first names combined.  I generally not a fan of this type of business name, but in some cases it works and that is true of Bev’s stores.  The particular combination ended up with a Scandinavian sound which worked well in this category.

Bev was innovative.  She and her team created a competition which involved creating “tablescape.”  The artistic community embraced it and each year during the competition the store was full of amazing artistic creations of table settings.  When this type of thing comes together you can attract media coverage.

Bev was one of the people with genuine Retail DNA.  The brilliant lesson I learned from Bev?  When she was looking at a decision she had to make, she would just make the decision that she felt was right.  She would try different things, sometimes they were the high-risk-high-reward types of decisions.  Her philosophy was that she didn’t have a university degree in retail.  Every experiment that failed was just an investment in her retail education.

We can all learn from Bev.  Many times in retail you have to make decisions that involve some risk.  I’m not suggesting foolish risks but if your gut tells you that it’s a good idea take a chance.  If it fails, well it’s all part of your retail MBA in the school of hard knocks.