Do you know the Copernican award ? It is awarded every year by Creative Good, a NY Customer Experience consultancy, and reckognizes top companies that succeed by putting customers at the center of their business universe.
For their 2007 prizes, the awards went to Whole Foods, in the "large company" segment, and to Shutterfly, in the medium company segment.
That's rather good news for me as well. Shutterfly is and has always been my model when building up Photoways, and Whole Foods, with its gorgeous merchandising and customer-centric organization also is a model in its kind.
I was yesterday dining with the guy who bought my fruit & vegetables retail chain in Lyon, he's now extremely successful but I told him he had to pay attention to the progress of Whole Foods. Their soon-to-open London flagship will mark their bold entry in Europe. Their know-how, in marketing great food is simply unbeatable on the planet. They sure have to fix the supply when in Europe and France, they have to adapt to the rigid retail regulation in France (both in terms of CDEC and labor laws), but they have quite an edge.
Back to the "Copernican Award", customers truly have to be put at the center of one's business universe, many companies claim they do that, but very very few really put it in practice. Doing so is not only a process, it is also a mindset and it is also an art.
This is all the fun and all the difficulty about it ! It's a bit like design, you may have some "rules" and process to follow, there's a great deal of intuition and vision about it.
Cependant, Shutterfly n'est pas extraordinairement rentable non ?
Posted by: Fabien | April 24, 2007 at 03:11 PM
this article: http://www.springwise.com/retail/new_instant_print_kiosks/ to date had over 45,000 hits on our web site, plus thousands of applications for master country, territory rights etc,the model is shifting to on-demand,the next generation customers will have camera/phone handsets,they will be looking for "instant gratification" (tm)
Posted by: Barrie Harrop | May 03, 2007 at 05:42 AM
un article qui va surement vous plaire
http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/biz2/0705/gallery.contrarians.biz2/2.html
Whole Foods CEO John Mackey slimmed down the grocery chain's executive salaries, resulting in a healthier, happier company.
Posted by: paul | May 04, 2007 at 05:54 PM