photo credit: John Kratz
Joel Spolsky has written a profile of an Willy Wonka-esque retail store called B&H in New York City. It is a 70,000 square foot super store devoted to cameras and video equipment, like a Cabelas for cameras. Could you do something equally imaginative in your business?
B&H opened in 1973, and it’s an amazing place. If you are in Manhattan, you should visit the store, on Ninth Avenue at 34th Street. The first thing you will notice? The place is humming. Originally a camera store, B&H has grown to carry more than 250,000 items, including all kinds of pro audio, pro video, and computer gear. The company is closely held and somewhat press shy, so it’s hard to know how successful it is. “Our business remains strong, particularly considering the overall economic climate,” a spokesperson says. I suspect that’s an understatement. The store is always packed with customers, browsing through hundreds of varieties of camera bags with every possible combination of lens compartments; the room full of telescopes; and, of course, enough lenses to burn all the ants in the Sahara to a crisp. The electronic superstores in Tokyo’s Akihabara district are the only other places where I have seen so much gear under one roof.
How could you turn your retail business into a tourist destination? Heres’s more:
And what a roof it is: The whole operation is a crazy Willy Wonka factory. If you want to check out a product that’s not on display, a salesperson orders it by computer terminal from a vast stockroom in the basement. Moments later, as if by magic, the product arrives at the retail counter, via an elaborate system of conveyor belts and dumbwaiters. You can try out the gear, see if you like it, and, if you do, the salesperson puts it in a green plastic box and places it on another conveyor belt, which runs, above your head, to the pickup counter. There, an employee bags your purchase. Meanwhile, your salesperson gives you a ticket, which you take to a payment counter. After you have paid, you get a different ticket that you take to the pickup counter to get your merchandise.