Absolutely Positively

On a lazy March Saturday afternoon, we turned my daughter’s boat-like decade-old Mercedes into a side street to check out the new Donna Hay store.  (40 Holdsworth St, Woollahra NSW 2025, (02) 9328 6555, www.donnahay.com.au)  The neighborhood is charming and the side street offers an alluring view into old and beautifully rehabbed properties that now shout cha-ching!

Donna Hay’s store, though a tasteful complement to the neighborhood, was a disappointment.  The one interesting thing in the store was the budding branch in the window.  The rest of the store looks like a stylish magazine spread or a cookbook page — staged white on white with just the hint of the signature robin’s egg blue and a small accent of taupe.  Almost everything, truly.  The overwhelming whiteness reminded me of a woman who came to my booth at a wholesale show some years ago and told me she was opening a shop in which everything would be green.  She’d buy what I had to offer in green, too.  I wondered how long she was open for business, in her green shop, or who her customer base was?  Donna went for white and robin’s egg blue. Donna already has a customer base, many of whom will come to see her store, like we did. I wonder how long Donna will be retailing, too.

In the basics of retailing, or Retail 101, as I like to think of it, one brings taste to a customer’s hands, and those point-of-sale displays? — don’t let them leave without buying something, anything.  Get those customers on a mailing list, and give them a reason to come back to the store again and again.  Simple, no?

That afternoon, we came ready to spend a little bit or maybe more if we found something nifty.  And we did buy the new Donna Hay cookbook, which we could have gotten anywhere, and left with an insipid, custardy, bad rice pudding, ordinary taste in our mouths.  You can see that the same formula that was applied to the successful magazine and the successful cookbook series was employed in the store too.  But somehow, two dimensional acuity does not translate to three-dimensional success.  There is a stylized magazine there, but no experiential substance.  Too bad.  What a wasted opportunity.

Dogs in Woollahra, Sydney

On the way back to our car, however, walking gingerly over heaved sidewalks and beside delightful old gardens, we did stumble on a fabulous sign put up by the City of Woollahra.  One that leaves no doubt about its intentions:  No dogs on this pitiful excuse for a lawn.  Absolutely, positively, totally, unequivocally, unambiguously, without a doubt — no dogs.  I guess the city of Woollahra doesn’t want any dogs there, huh?  I don’t know about you, but the small flame of a rebellious teenager flickered for a moment, wishing I had a dog to bring to their park — in the dead of night — to leave a small message.  To be environmentally conscious, of course, I’d wrap the gift in a plastic bag and tie a pretty ribbon it and place it at the bottom of the sign.  Almost irresistible — absolutely, positively.