MARKETING MYOPIA: Out of the bunker thinking provides fresh perspectives, permitting radiant sunlight of opportunity

My confession: I am a vigilant optimist. Sure, call me a cockeyed optimist, a Pollyanna and a little crazy but always positively enthusiastic. For me, the metaphoric glass of life is always half full. How about you?

I know the answer from the disappointing dearth of furniture retailers that needed to be at the High Point Market. 

What a profound opportunity cost for the all those bunker-minded merchants — the thousands of self-proclaiming souls, wrongfully praying to idols of doubt. Sadly their fear consumes them as economic prey. Why? They mistakenly believe they are wholly indispensible and must be tethered to their stores.

No one can convince me otherwise. Getting out of the store, I mean, bunker, and into the constellation of High Point showrooms would lift spirits and produce new insights. That is, if all those absent retailers would just relax and really think about their future beyond the next sale. The operative work is think. 

Tell me that any living and breathing merchant and designer could not benefit from capturing many new ideas in a few days of visiting High Point Market showrooms?! In a planned escape from their incarcerating bunkers, all those people missed the opportunity to engage their minds in substantive merchandising and marketing discussions, not to mention the visual stimulation.

But, too many are paralyzed. The fear factor grips most merchants. They feel they know it all and don’t need any new ideas, requiring spirited imitative. This is stinking-thinking or, more accurately, non-thinking. 

For merchants and designers wanting viable paths to new ideas for survival, they need to know what they don’t know, be willing to admit and act. That means seeing what they haven’t seen, and discovering what they need and not what they believe they want. 

The only way to achieve success is to move forcefully with an earnest commitment that new ideas and opportunities always abound . . . if you seek them. 

Let me paraphrase a powerful thought and plan of action from the inimitable Sir Winston Churchill: If you’re going through hell, keep going. 

For merchants, designers and manufacturers going through hell: Keep going. Act instead of reacting. If not, you will surely burn your opportunity in the flames of a self-imposed pity party, where waiting for change never occurs. 

Oh, here’s another Churchillian gem: Never, never give up.