Retail Industry

Already It's been a busy month of May for the Starbucks (SBUX) corporation. A boycott, a bomb squad, a theft ring, a court ruling, a new opening in a new country, a major promotion on a national holiday... It's difficult to imagine what kind of caffeine was consumed by the Starbucks executives who had this much notable news to deal with before the month of May is even halfway over. The most recent news for the Starbucks corporate team is...

• A bomb squad used a robot to open a suspicious briefcase found outside a Murietta, CA Starbucks this month. Although no explosives were disarmed, an iPad and some music performance equipment were the unfortunate casualties of a misinterpreted sidewalk X-ray and the subsequent use of robotic force.


• In another police-related matter, three men were arrested for a series of thefts in which they are accused of snatching laptops literally out of the hands of Starbucks customers as they were typing in Starbucks stores in the Phoenix area. (So an iPad can sit in a briefcase on the sidewalk outside of a Starbucks without being stolen, but the computer you're actively using at a Starbucks table is at risk?)

  Apparently the resale value of stolen laptops doesn't justify the wait time it takes to snatch computers that are left unattended during Starbucks restroom breaks. So I guess Starbucks laptop and notepad users will have to be prepared at all times to use those scalding hot Starbucks beverages to defend their property from audacious snatch-and-run thieves from now on.



• The Starbucks legal team has also been on the defensive in the U.S. Court of Appeals, answering allegations of unfair labor practices from the National Labor Relations Board. Starbucks prevailed in this particular court proceeding, and it's now clear that Starbucks has the right to limit the number of pro-union buttons that can be worn by on-duty Starbucks employees to just one. It's not so clear how the price of the average Starbucks beverage will be affected in the future to cover the legal bills incurred to win the landmark button-control case, however.


• In another government run-in, a busy New York Starbucks was shut down for two days by the Department of Consumer Affairs because some Starbucks employee somewhere failed to renew the permit that allowed a restaurant with outdoor seating to be operated at this particular location. Apparently moving the furniture off the sidewalk while the paperwork was being processed ;wasn't a viable option, so the best bureaucratic solution was to slap an "illegal operation" notice on the Starbucks front door and lose two days of tax revenue. Good call.


• Most recently, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) launched an international "Dump Starbucks" campaign in protest of the official Starbucks stance to support same-sex marriage. Although the non-profit "marriage protection" group claims to have gathered more than 38,000 signatures, there is no indication that any of these signatures came from previously loyal Starbucks customers. Time will tell whether the NOM campaign will have a negative impact on Starbucks (like the HRC boycott of Target and Best Buy) or whether it will backfire (like the One Million Moms campaign against jcpenney). Most likely it is political posturing that will have little measurable effect at all.


• Also this month, the first Starbucks store was opened at the Helsinki airport in Finland. No drama, no controversy, no boycotts, no legal wranglings, just a new presence in a new country which will no longer be deprived of the Starbucks brand.

If you add all of this big business together, it doesn't even come close to the busy-ness that I observed in one Starbucks store during one two-hour period. For those who missed it, May 13th was Mother's Day AND it was the last day of Half-Price Frappuccino Happy Hour Week. I have to believe that some marketing manager consciously decided that it was a good idea for those two events to occur on the same day. I'm pretty certain that there was more than one Starbucks store employee who consciously thought otherwise.

But if sheer volume was the goal, the Mother's Day Half Price Frappuccino event was definitely a success. From 3:01 to 4:59:59 that day from where I was sitting in the corner of one medium-sized Starbucks location, there were no less than forty people waiting either to place their order or grab their frapp at any given time. There were almost as many green-aproned people stuffed behind the service counter - pumping, mixing, blending, cupping, and topping frappuccino ingredients in an infinite number of personalized combinations. The extra frapparistas brought in to handle the frappa-rush were heads-down and hyper-focused, despite the frappa-cup mountain assembling itself in their peripheral view.

At 4:26 PM, one of the super-slammed somewhat sticky Frapparista's called out "Thirty-four minutes!" A cheer erupted behind the counter, followed by appreciative laughter from the now nearly 100 customers crowded into the store in some stage of frappa-limbo.

Thirty-four minutes later, even though the frappromotion was officially over, the frappa-frantic activity continued until the last order was ordered, the last blender had blended, and the last half-priced drink was handed to Daphne, the last official frappromotion customer who looked to be less than three years old, and more interested in the straw than the frozen vanilla bean soymilk treat it was connected to.

In all that time with all those customers and all those completely customized concoctions, I only saw one customer return to the counter because their order was wrong. There might have been more mistakes, but only one customer was bothered enough to complain. My own Frappa Mother's Day drink was delivered sometime in that last 34 minutes and it was picture perfect (as you can see).

It was an impressive display of Starbucks training, efficiency, and teamwork. But the most impressive part didn't begin until about 5:25. That's when the first extra employee finished cleaning up, took off his apron and declared, "I'm out!" The spontaneous response from the dozen or so employees still busy behind the counter was "Thanks John!" and a smattering of additional comments like "You Rock!" "Great team!" "Thanks for showing up!" and "Sick, dude!"

One by one as the frappa-extras finished up and checked out, the scene repeated itself and each of the departing employees received their due share of spontaneous praise and appreciation. If it had been written in a book, or scripted in a Starbucks managers training manual, it couldn't have been a more classic demonstration of workplace engagement.

According to the unofficial report from the last frapparistas standing that day, that one location "rocked almost 600 frapps." This seems somewhat impossible if you do the math, but the important thing was that they declared it with pride and there were fist bumps all around in celebration of the accomplishment.

So, as with any multinational enterprise, there's a lot of corporate, government and legal crap to deal with behind the scenes. But if you look beyond the crap and see the happy frapp happening made possible by all the crap-handling, somehow it all seems worth it.

For Starbucks leaders, employees and customers alike, the important thing is not to let yourself get too distracted by either the crap or the frapp, lest you look down to find you've lost the computer on your lap.

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Today is a significant date in both business and retail history because on April 30, 1939, U.S. commercial television debuted at the New York World's Fair, with the help of a signal transmission from the top of the Empire State Building.

The value of the birth of commercial television is inestimable to life, to business, and to the retail industry. Without television there wouldn't have been much of a category for Best Buy (BBY) to kill. In a U.S. retail industry without television, there would be no Super Bowl commercials, no effective way for Jim Cramer to rant and scream about retail stocks, and no way to give hourly retail employees a face and a voice by an Undercover Boss. Without commercial television the Home Shopping Network would be the Sears catalogue, and the quality of life would have been diminished without the pocket fishermen, ThighMasters, Bowflex machines, and George Foreman Grills peddled to the masses on infomercials.

Whenever retailers find themselves saying that something is a passing fad - like e-gift cards, mobile shopping apps, Facebook, and Pinterest, for example - it would be a good idea to remember that 1939 world's fair attendees probably thought the same thing about some crazy picture box that needed the world's tallest building to operate. Retailers can either embrace technology or get trampled by it. Either way, today's consumer technology marches quickly on, with or without retailer participation.

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A busy month of May U.S. retail industry earnings reports begins on Tuesday, as seven retailers will be kicking off the earnings season with May Day earnings releases. Here is some of the recent news about Avon, Big 5, Nutrisystem, Office Depot, Papa John's, PF Chang's and True Religion which has affected expectations about their earnings and the reliability of their stock performance in the short and long term.

Avon (AVP) reports its quarterly earnings on Tuesday, just days after another one of its executives resigned as part of an ongoing overseas bribery investigation. The Avon bribery allegedly took place in China in 2005. Although the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prohibits the bribery of foreign officials in business dealings, Avon is not the only retail company to be caught doing it. Truth be told, if any U.S. company is bribing its way around any country, then there are probably many other U.S. companies that are doing the same.

Big 5 Sporting Goods (BGFV) has taken its place on the leading edge of technology alongside McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts by offering paperless mobile coupons via the Yowza!! smartphone app. Big 5 is also expected to be on the leading edge of a profitable sporting goods industry when it reports its earnings on Tuesday.

Nutrisystem Inc. (NTRI) lost a CEO and gained a high-profile celebrity spokesperson all in the same month. While CEO Joe Redling is stepping out of the executive boardroom, superstar Janet Jackson is stepping into the spotlight as a Nutrisystem celebrity spokesperson. Weight Watchers revenue grew 15.6% after Jennifer Hudson became its celebrity success story, and even though hopes are high that Janet Jackson will have the same positive effect on Nutrisystem, there are no high hopes for Nutrisystems earnings report on Tuesday.

It wasn't a happy day for Office Depot (ODP) when Amazon (AMZN) announced that it would be actively seeking to woo away commercial customers to its AmazonSupply division, which offers more product choices, lower prices, free shipping on orders over $50, and a 365-day return policy. The effect of AmazonSupply competition won't be felt when Office Depot reports earnings on Tuesday, but investors can expect to start hearing about "increased competition" in the near future.

There's no question about the retail politcs of Papa John's (PZZA) founder John Schnatter after he hosted a fundraiser in his Louisville, Kentucky home for Republican candidate Mitt Romney. Coincidentally Romney retold the story of Papa John Schnatter to a group of college students days later, citing it as a great American business story. It is not expected that Romney will speak during Papa John's earnings teleconference on Tuesday, but it is expected that Schnatter will have plenty to say about the 50 pizza restaurants that were acquired in Denver and Minneapolis, which will be operated as company-owned outlets.

It's all about the menu for PF Chang's (PFCB). Its Home Menu frozen food line was named as the best new product for Kraft in 2011, it launched a lower-priced lunch menu in response to customer perception that its price points are too high, and it unveiled its plans to convert some of its Pei Wei Diners to Pei Wei Asian Markets which have a faster and cheaper menu. The positive PF Chang's news is expected to continue when the company reports its quarterly earnings on Tuesday.

The value of the True Religion (TRLG) brand of jeans is evidenced by the fact that they are the most stolen, most pirated, most returned, and most coveted jeans in the civilized jeans-wearing world right now. But there's doubt about how long that "now" can last for True Religion or any other high-end designer jeans company, so expectations about True Religion's earnings report on Tuesday are mixed.

Complete calendar of U.S. retail industry earnings reports scheduled for the first week of May >>

Complete 2012 Retail Earnings Calendar >>

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Reporters and auto industry analysts were given unprecedented access to the Toyota (TM) Motomachi auto manufacturing plant in Toyota City, Japan this past weekend so that Toyota could showcase new production innovations, and re-establish its commitment to quality engineering. Adjustable assembly lines, laser-welding, and new paint technology were among the production innovations showcased during the Toyota tour, which Toyota allowed to be viewed, but not photographed by the special tour audience assembled.

From a manufacturing and public relations perspective, Toyota is still trying to recover after it tarnished its own brand reputation with faulty engineering that caused massive recalls starting in 2008. From a consumer perspective, my personal experience with Toyota's service team has proven to me repeatedly that its commitment to quality at the dealership level couldn't be higher.

My last encounter with Toyota service happened just last week when I pulled into a random dealership (not where I had purchased my car) without an appointment to ask a couple of clueless questions about the functioning of the gadgets inside my car. I thought they were stupid questions which would only need simple answers, but it turns out that they actually did require some tweaking from a member of the Toyota service team. Toyota Tony came to my rescue without question, hesitation, or any hint of impatience with my inability to figure out the workings of my vehicle's electronics for myself.

My unplanned service visit was in the middle of a day when I was hauling some things in my car, and the floor behind my driver's seat was full. Rather than make me unload or shift things around in order to adjust my seat so that his long legs could fit in, Toyota Tony squished himself into my much-too-close-for-the-average-driver seat, hanging halfway out of the car door the entire time he was adjusting my gadgets and giving me a thorough lesson in their operation.

What does commitment to quality look like? It looks like this service employee, who had a genuinely helpful attitude that 27 years of dealing with clueless Toyota customers hadn't tarnished. If you want to know the difference between meeting and exceeding customer expectations, now you have a visual representation of doing-whatever-it-takes-ness.

Despite its quality control challenges, Fortune Magazine still placed Toyota on the 2011 World's Most Admired Retailers list based on several aspects of its corporate leadership and operational excellence. My personal experiences tells me that Toyota still deserves this kind of global business recognition. And when the Toyota corporate mission statement says "We will meet our challenging goals by engaging the talent and passion of people, who believe there is always a better way," I don't doubt for a minute that they mean it. I believe what Toyota says and what Toyota does are the same thing because I've seen evidence of it hanging halfway out my car door.

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Social media photo-sharing webiste Pinterest announced in its blog that it broke a company record on April 23rd and 24th when it experienced its highest traffic days ever.  Pinterest leaders failed to disclose a number for that traffic, but after seeing 103 million page views in the month of February, its safe to assume that the new daily traffic record was respectable. No doubt the record-breaking days were Pinterests' highest traffic days "so far," to be followed by many more record-breaking traffic highs, as Pinterest continues its meteoric growth in the social media-sphere.

The number of major U.S. retail industry companies using Pinterest is high, mostly because its easy for retail leaders to see that Pinterest is just like a big online catalog, with the added bonus of easy word-of-cybermouth repinned recommendations among friends.  Finally retailers can be happy about their social media activity because it returns measurable ROI. Retailers are also happy to join Pinterest because unlike other social media platforms, Pinterest users aren't repelled by retail presence in this social media space, but rather welcome and embrace the companies that are providing them with good artwork for their own pinboards.

Undoubtedly the thing that is most pinteresting to retailers about Pinterest is the infrastructure that inherently supports productive commerce.   It's so much easier to buy into the idea of social media when the click of a product photo leads pinterested pinners directly to a website sales page.  When the ROI is clear, the allocation of resources aimed at establishing a Pinterest presence is clear as well.

One of the retailers leading the way for the U.S. retail industry on Pinterest is Whole Foods (WFMI).  Its 50,000 followers on Pinterest don't come close to matching its 902,000 followers on Facebook or its 2.6 million followers on Twitter.  But still, it's a logical move for Whole Foods to show up in the Pinterest-osphere with mouth-watering food photos and recipes so that the Pinterest community can pin and promote the high-quality Whole Foods brand image all over the place.

Since there are no pin-to-click sales for Whole Foods to measure, the company is just going to have to focus on how well its Pinterest activities are aligned with the Whole Foods Mission, Values, and Quality Standards, and hope that there are some sales that result from all their goodwill pinning.

So, as it pertains to Pinterest, the theory goes that the more viral a retailer's pinned photo becomes, the more likely it is that pinners who are pinterested in the product will click on it and eventually make a purchase.  That's a pretty basic marketing theory about the benefits of product exposure.  The question for retailers on Pinterest is how best to support and enhance a viral repining campaign.

Manipulated virality never seems to be as effective as organic virality and it probably never will because it lacks the energy of authenticity that motivates proactive sharing.  But that won't deter the U.S. retail industry in their efforts to create a repinning phenomenon, because it's the nature of retailing to go out and make things happen.

One pinteresting retail repin campaign was recently launched by flash sales website Gilt.com this month.  In order to encourage its followers to repin certain product images from its pinboards, Gilt created a "Pin it to Unlock" program which gave the Pinterest community access to a Pinterest-only discount after certain product imagse had been repinned at least 50 times by Pinterest users.

There's no word from Gilt about the success of the campaign. And even though some consumers expressed frustration about having to work too hard to get a good deal, Gilt made a good attempt at actively engaging consumers and integrating the Pinterest concept into the retail process.  No doubt other retail marketers watched the campaign with pinterest and repinned some of the creativity from it onto their own mental pinboards for future Pinterest marketing campaigns.

Another question is whether retailers will be able to figure it all out before the novelty of the Pinterest site wears off and the enthusiasm of the pinners levels off.  My personal prediction is that Black Friday and the 2012 holiday shopping season are going to be very Pinterest-ing indeed.

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When the DiversityInc 2012 list of Top 50 Employers for Diversity ranking list was released recently, it was disappointing to see that there were very few companies with significant retailing operations that were considered to be leaders in workplace diversity. It was even more disappointing to realize that there were only two completely retail companies - Target (TGT) and jcpenney (JCP) - that were recognized for their leadership in diversity.

Seemingly there is plenty of diversity in the hourly front lines of retailing. But in order to rank as a Top 50 Retail Company for Diversity, a retail company needs to also have exemplary diversity communications, a demonstrated commitment to diversity from its CEO, and diversity in its supply chain as well. In other words, this is a list that recognizes diversity that is authentic and deep, not just diversity that doesn't make it any farther than the carefully crafted words in the employee handbook.

How could it be that retail companies like Wal-Mart (WMT) and McDonald's and diversity-driven Darden Restaurants (DRI)are not identified as diversity leaders? Well, either their commitment to diversity is not as big as they want customers and potential employees to believe, or else somebody failed to complete the 300-question survey and submit it to DiversityInc by the deadline. It's likely a little bit of both.

It doesn't really matter if a retail company gets recognized for its diversity as long as it has diversity, but it's definitely a topic that can't be ignored. Just last week the EEOC widened the scope of Title VII to include transgender individuals, and along with that announcement comes another list of things that could be considered discriminatory in the workplace. Perhaps this is just this type of thing that leaves little time for filling out surveys.

It's truly unfortunate that all of the government mandates about diversity have created a discrimination-lawsuit-prevention approach to diversity in some of the largest U.S. retail companies. It would be great to think that all diversity programs and policies were enacted because a company truly understood the benefits of diversity. But that is the flip side of the diversity coin that not all U.S. companies really buy into.

So, let's remind ourselves again... what are the benefits of diversity in the workplace? According to a 2011 report by the Network of Executive Women (NEW), customers feel most comfortable doing business with companies whose employees reflect the diversity of their own communities. Additionally the NEW report concluded that from a greatly diverse workplace comes great innovative solutions for capturing and retaining diversity in a retail company's customer base.

In other words, diversity is as diversity does. And in wobbly economic times, retail companies would be well-advised to be and do all that they can to create comfort for as many demographic segments of the working and consuming population as possible.

Of all the corporate training programs I've designed and delivered, my diversity training program was the shortest. Just one sentence, in fact... Treat everybody like the unique and valuable individual that they are. The end. Those that specialize in workplace diversity would consider that a gross oversimplification, but really... does diversity in any workplace have to be any more complex than that?

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Consumer Reports recently released the results of a survey which asked 24,203 of its readers to rate and give feedback about grocery stores and supermarkets. Based on the survey, Consumer Reports ranked U.S. supermarket chains from "best" to "worst." While the Top Ten Grocery and Supermarket Chains list is filled with mostly the same chains every year - Wegmans, Trader Joe's, Publix, Costco (COST), etc. - what was interesting in this 2012 Consumer Reports supermarket research survey was the number of shoppers who said they had abandoned their usual grocery store and defected to a competitor.

About 33% of the Consumer Reports survey respondents said that they had switched grocery shopping loyalties in the prior year. The dissatisfaction points that became the catalyst for this significant customer defection rate were high prices, poor selection, long lines, cluttered aisles, bad bagging, out of stock advertised specials, poor quality food, employee rudeness, overcharging, and crowds.

In essence there were only two categories of grocery store and supermarket customer dissatisfaction identified by these customers - price and service failures. In essence, there are only ever two kinds of retail dissatisfaction - price and service failures.

Many retail managers would look at that list of grocery customer dissatisfiers and consider only the employee rudeness, bad bagging, and the long lines to be a "service failure." But that would be a narrow definition of service failures that doesn't serve any retail operation very well. Any aspect of the shopping experience that fails to meet a customer's expectations is a service failure. And those grocery stores that lost their share of the 33% of customer defectors this year lost them one price point and one service failure at a time.

How to Lose - Or Retain - Customers, One At a Time

OfficeMax (OMX) is not generally my chain store of choice for office supplies for a number of reasons. But OfficeMax is the only major office supply chain (that I know of) which provides document shredding, a cost-effective and efficient service for all that paperwork with private information you don't want to share with dumpster diving identity thieves. So I popped into a random OfficeMax location to drop off this month's shreddables, and when I interrupted the print center employee from the book she was reading, she announced with a hint of annoyance, "All our shred bins are full."

From the disinterested look on her face It was obvious that the Print-onista had nothing more to say on the subject and she considered the transaction to be complete. Since she didn't seem to have any intention of servicing me any further, I went on the OfficeMax management time clock to try and create a good customer service experience for myself.

Me: So.... Perhaps there is another Office Max close by that also does the shredding?

Print-onista: Yeah, maybe. There's the Division St. location.

Me: So... Do you know for sure that they do the shredding?

Print-onista: They should.

Me: So... Do you think you could call them and find out if they do the shredding for sure and also find out if their bins are full before I drive out there?

Print-onista: Yeah. [EYEROLL]

(While I was waiting for the phone number to be found and the call to be made, I noticed that OfficeMax had branded its printing service area to be Office Max imPRESS. Their Print-onista was definitely making an imPRESSion on me, but probably not the kind that was intended with the rebranding effort.)

Print-onista: They said they have one bin that's not full yet.

Me: Great - thank-you. What is the address?

Print-onista: I don't know the address. It's somewhere on Division close to a Fred Meyer.

Me: I have no idea where that is.

Print-onista: [BLANK STARE BEFORE RETURNING TO READING]

Weary of my unpaid role as OfficeMax customer service coach, I left without spending any money, replaying in my mind all the reasons why OfficeMax is not my chosen source for office supplies.

In my opinion this was a small service failure which, like every service failure, had the potential to pivot me towards an improved opinion of the OfficeMax retail experience or pivot me towards further deterioration of my relationship with OfficeMax. So.... we know which way that went... read more >>

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Stopping into a random Starbucks (SBUX) on Easter Sunday morning, I saw a handwritten sign that said "Find an Easter Egg and Get a Free Drink." When I asked about it, I was told that there were plastic Easter eggs hidden around the store and everybody who found one would get a free Easter drink of their choice. I took that Easter bunny-esque challenge, went on the Starbucks in-store Easter egg hunt and found a blue plastic Easter egg hiding inside of a ceramic Starbucks logo cup.

When I returned to the cash register to present my egg and collect my prize, this is the conversation that ensued between the two Starbucks "partners" (a/k/a hourly employees wearing green aprons) working at the front counter...

Eric: So, what are we going to do with these eggs when people find them so that they can get their free drink?

Aaron: Good question. We shouldn't just give out free things or change prices to zero all day. Starbucks doesn't really like it when you mess with their prices.

Eric: Yeah... I can't believe people come in here and try to negotiate prices with me.

Aaron: I'm going to get the service certificates out of the safe and we'll use those to give the free drinks to people who find the eggs.

Eric: What does a rabbit have to do with finding eggs? What does a rabbit stand for? I don't understand why the rabbit is the symbol of any holiday.

Aaron: There's Bugs Bunny.

Eric: What does Bugs Bunny symbolize?

Aaron: There's the Playboy Bunny.

Eric: Well, I GET the Playboy Bunny. That's like the symbol of fertility.

Aaron: In some cultures very large women are the symbol of fertility. How come nobody eats rabbit on Easter?

Eric: You don't eat the symbol of Easter. That would be like eating doves on Christmas. You can do it, but it would probably be frowned upon.

Aaron: Turkeys - people eat turkeys on Thanksgiving.

Eric: That's different. Turkeys aren't the symbol of Thanksgiving. Eating turkey IS Thanksgiving. Somebody should make an American holiday that isn't tied to any religious event with no mascot that people could just make up any kind of crazy tradition they want.

Aaron: Yeah. Starbucks is secular so all the stores are open on Easter Sunday, but the guys who service the machines don't work on Easter Sunday. So if anything breaks down, I guess you have to call the Easter bunny to fix it. He works on Easter Sunday.

Eric: I'm glad we're giving out these service certificates for finding eggs instead of always giving them to mad and mean people.

Aaron: Yeah. Some people you just can't say you're sorry in enough ways.

Eric: Yeah - I'd rather give out free things to happy people.

Aaron: Every day is a holiday at Starbucks.

Without a doubt, this was one of the most entertaining employee exchanges I've ever witnessed. And besides the who's-on-first comedic value of the conversation, I also learned much about what is sincerely true about Starbucks mission, service recovery attitude, and employee ownership at that particular Starbucks location.

I was the only customer in the store at the time, and because I was tucked into one of the cushy chairs in the corner, I think the Starbucks partners forgot that I was there. While there was nothing objectionable about this particular conversation, it did remind me of an aspect of working at Disney that I have rarely observed anywhere else. That is, the concept of "on stage" and "off stage" behavior.

Working at a Disney theme park, there was a clear line between what was acceptable to do and say when in the eyeshot or earshot of a Disney guest (customer), and what was unacceptable for Disney guests to observe. Basically, any and all shop talk and behind-the-scenes operational details were not discussed in front of guests. Why? Because it would destroy "the magic."

Certainly a typical retail customer has few expectation of "magic" at a typical retail store or restaurant. Still, there are plenty of conversations about policy, procedure, management inadequacies, and company flaws that just shouldn't be part of a retail customer experience. And yet they are. It's always so strange when I observe employees who think it is perfectly appropriate to talk about anything and everything that pops into their heads, as if the customer standing in front of them can't hear what they're saying.

But even though there is is an abundance of questionable employee behaviors easily found on the retail stages of America every day, the Easter morning Starbucks banter that I observed was perfectly appropriate demonstration of an important Starbucks principle. That is, "When we are fully engaged, we connect with, laugh with, and uplift the lives of our customers - even if just for a few moments."

Any retail company could write that principle, and every employee could read that principle. But principles don't become retail reality unless employees know that management truly supports and rewards what's written in the employee manual. Obviously Aaron and Eric did. Finding a demonstration of that kind of alignment between retail philosophy and retail practice is a much more rare find than a plastic blue egg in a ceramic coffee cup.

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If Liz Claiborne was still walking among us, she would have been 83 years old today. And perhaps Liz would have been pleased with the early birthday present that investors gave to Liz Claiborne (LIZ) stock yesterday after the Wall Street Journal reported that the company was in the process of going private. Or perhaps not.

It's difficult not to be happy about a 13% single day surge in stock prices. But don't forget that the LIZ company stock was the stock of all the stocks on the stock exchange back in the day when it was THE stock that gave the very best returns from 1977 to 1987. At one point, Liz Claiborne stock had increased 300-fold from its own publicly traded birthday. Given its history of success, yesterday's stock surge would probably have been a bittersweet birthday gift for Liz Claiborne because of how and why it came to be.

A private acquisition may not have been the happiest birthday news for the first female founder of a Fortune 500 company. Perhaps the founder of the company that is credited with creating the retail concept of coordinated separates would be blowing out her birthday candles today wishing that the brand name that is also her own name was not owned today by the jcpenney (JCP) company. Perhaps the winner of the Harper's Junior Bazaar Design Contest (the 1940's equivalent to winning a Project Runway challenge) would have wanted a dominant presence for her affordable working woman designs in the Macy's (M) chain again as her birthday present.

Perhaps today would be a happy day for Liz Claiborne, or perhaps it would be a bittersweet birthday. But no matter which direction the Liz Claiborne (soon-to-be Fifth & Pacific) company moves, it will not erase the positive impact that fashion icon Liz Claiborne had on both the fashion and retail industries in the U.S. From Liz Claiborne's broader perspective in the boardroom in the sky, there is undoubtedly much appreciation for the fun and excitement of being able to redefine the style of the 1980's working woman and change the course of American business fashions.

For anyone who truly understands the fast-moving world of women's fashion like Liz Claiborne obviously did, all the events in the past, present, and future of the Liz Claiborne company are just part of the ebb and flow of the U.S. retail industry. Happy Birthday to the Liz Claiborne of the past and the Liz Claiborne company of the future. (And happy birthday to me, as we coincidentally share the same birthday.)

Speaking of that... thanks to all of the restaurants and retailers who flooded my e-mail with birthday greetings, freebies and discounts this month, as they do every year through their customer birthday clubs and customer loyalty e-clubs. Even if everyone else forgets, it's always nice to know that I can always depend on the sincere and timely happy birthday wishes of retailers like Starbucks, Baskin Robbins, and Aveda each year. Now if I just could find the time to collect on all the fun birthday surprises...

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When Finish Line (FINL) reported its Q4 2012 earnings today, it marked a strong finish for U.S. retail industry earnings reports in the month of March. Finish Line sales were up both online and in its brick-and-mortar stores, earnings rose 22%, and Finish Line easily exceeded analyst expectations. Along with this good news, Finish Line also announced that its FY 2013 finish would probably not be as strong due to capital expenditures on new stores and existing store format changes.

In response, Short-term focused investors dumped Finish Line stocks in a predictable display of Wall Street's disinterest in the long-term sustainable success of American businesses.

So what Finish Line will be spending its money on in the 2013 fiscal year is a new store concept that seems to embrace a very lululemon-like strategy for customer engagement. The founder of lululemon athletica (LULU) stumbled upon its successful strategy of in-store yoga classes and yoga community integration quite by accident when his clothes designing was in start-up mode and he used his design studio for yoga classes at night in order to pay the rent. By keeping this accidental experiential retail format as it expanded, lululemon stumbled upon a retail integration strategy that weaves product sales, lifestyle activities, and a niche community together in a masterful way.

When Finish Line described its new Running Specialty Group store concept, it referred to "a shopping experience that is expert, highly localized and infused with the sport's unique culture," which sounds very lululemon-like. As it looks right now, Finish Line (in partnership with a private equity firm) will acquire independent specialty running stores to be part of a specialty running chain. Instead of depersonalizing these independent running stores to a generic Finish Line concept, the stores will continue to run with the personality of a small business, and continue to be integrated into the local running community. Finish Line will bring its back office systems and big chain efficiencies to the stores, which should hopefully make them more profitable individual operations. If this Finish Line specialty running strategy works, everybody will win.

Additionally, Finish Line announced that it intends to open 25 new stores, which "elevates the shopping experience and brings collaboration with our brand partners like Nike, Under Armour, Jordan and Adidas to new and exciting levels," according to CEO Glenn Lyon. Without specific details it's hard to know what that means exactly, but if Lyon really wants to create "new and exciting levels" of retailing to brick-and-mortar stores these days, then the prediction is that the new and improved Finish Line stores will include leading edge technology, high-level employee engagement, and sports community integration. In other words, they will be very lululemon-like.

Just like Amazon (AMZN) is doing as it spends more than it makes in the short-term to pursue a better version of itself, Finish Line will need to stay the course, run its own race, and ignore the reactions of the investment community. In the long-run it's better to do what it takes to stay strong in the retail race than it is to waste your energy chasing after Wall Street measures of success that are fickle, fleeting, and probably a few other "f" words as well.

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