Serve or Fade Away

Had to run errands today. In Chicagoland you now need to call before going as things begin to open back up. With a 5 stage recovery plan most business here is in stage 2 heading to stage 3. I was shocked to see a Harbor Freight Tools already out of business. As construction and projects are top of the locked down home owner and furloughed employee.

In the same parking lot was JoAnn Fabric. Was expecting to pop with requisite mask and gloves and get fabric stick pins so my wife can try her hand as mask making. Again stopped in my tracks as there was "only curbside delivery". Having had that experience at Ikea a month ago, I knew it was pointless to expect to order on the sidewalk, wait and get delivery. At Ikea you are at least a day out from online order. At JoAnn Fabric the store won't see the order for an hour after submit. I predict they are out of business in a month.

It is time to "LEAP TO THE FUTURE", my motto for over a year when building true real-time closed-loop life-cycle solutions. B2C systems need to become near-real time. Orders must tie to inventory in a store, not place a ticket to store queue, dependent on staff availability and long-lead times before the consumer gets confirmation. If the delay time is anything more than 8 hours, I might as well order with Prime for next day delivery.

I stopped as a Walmart of a honey do task and the line was around the store corner. No point, why would I wait 45 minutes before I even set foot in the store? Went to Target with no issue, walked right in. Logistics, traffic patterns and process is going to win for some and drive others out of business before you can blink. Home Depot is running a great model. A bouncer at the entrance and a counter at the exit. If you go a 6 am you never have a line.

My grocery store, Jewel_Osco has also been a non-event. Just go in, shop and check out like normal. Just stand back 6 feet and wait your turn. And I am finding bargains and hitting my personal 30% off target on my entire purchase.

Now for my radical idea. Eliminate all coins and cash in that order. Why have we had pennys for 20 years? Worthless metal, just keeping a whole industry in business. Now is the time to disrupt and reinvent. Take all the operational cost of making money and put it into new secure cards to issue to all those with no electronic means today. Issued with a bank account spread across all financial institutions. Most of the non-card people may already have a vehicle through welfare, medicaid or another government source of help.

What are your LEAP not lean into the future ideas. Now is the time to reorder chaos into a more efficient, more effective and finally better user experience. I am a user and I am not happy.