Uncrowning The Customer

In the Dublin of my boyhood, the Superquinn brand was truly a household name. Particularly in our household, where my mother, who knew the value of things, repeatedly chose to turn left out of our home near the Children's Hospital to shop in her favourite store in Walkinstown, rather than right to the nearby Crumlin Shopping Centre with its shiny new Quinnsworth (now Tesco).

I've written previously in Open-Heart Branding (When It All Adds Up) of the extraordinary retail brand that Feargal Quinn built in the sixties and seventies, and his amazing feat of persuading cash-strapped housewives to see the real value in shopping at his stores, where great food, innovative offers and exceptional service were available at a premium. Feargal had so much faith in his own offer that he knew he didn't need to compete on price.

As an artisan brand-builder myself, and a keen student of the great brands, I read and re-read his book Crowning The Customer, in which he describes the simple but difficult task of putting the customer first, and of crafting an offer laden with value which can be readily appreciated by the customer. And by appreciated, I mean ready to pay for it, and pay handsomely too.

And in these difficult economic circumstances, I often use the example of the Superquinn of my boyhood to inspire those clients of mine who are inclined to lose faith in the quality of their own offer in the mistaken belief that customers cannot appreciate the value in it. If Feargal Quinn could persuade the hard-pressed but savvy housewives of seventies' Dublin to spend their money wisely with him, I say, then surely there's a place in your marketplace for products and services that crown the customer in much the same way.

And yet I was unsurprised by last month's news (Superquinn Brand To Be Dropped By New Owners) that recent buyers Musgraves plan to rebrand the 24 Superquinn stores as Supervalu.

Unsurprised, because I believe that Superquinn, having crowned the customer triumphantly throughout the seventies and eighties, lost faith in the value of its own offer when the competition upped the ante in the nineties, and surreptitiously stole back the customer's golden crown to replace it with a shiny but copper-based replica, the classic fool's gold.

I trace it back to an apparently innocuous event, sometime in the late nineties, at the entrance to our local store. It probably seemed like a good idea at the time, but it heralded the beginning of the end of the great Superquinn brand. There it stood, a simple supermarket trolley, packed with the mix of products you'd typically find on a weekly household shopping list. Attached to it was the legend proclaiming that the cost of the products in this Superquinn trolley was as cheap as those to be found in its Dunnes or Tesco equivalents.

Now, I knew that this was probably true in this case - I had no doubt the local shop-manager had carefully researched and assembled this particular trolley-load of goods so that it would bear comparison - but that wasn't the point. I knew that it wasn't true in general.

In one clumsy gesture, Superquinn had swiped the crown from the customer. Remember that Feargal Quinn had always appealed to the intelligence of the savvy shopper, and in doing so had created a very grown-up brand. No cheap tricks for Feargal. My mother knew that she was being charged a premium, and she was happy to pay it. The last thing the savvy customer needs is to have their intelligence and loyalty insulted.  Because, whilst it was almost certainly true that the particular trolley-load in question was as cheap as its competitors, the customer knew that shopping in Superquinn once came with a bold premium attached: a premium on great food, innovative products and exceptional service that they had agreed was worth paying for.

Superquinn, which had achieved the near-impossible task of creating value in a cash-poor economy, managed to destroy that same value in the cash-rich (and growing richer) society of late nineties' Ireland. Fool's gold indeed.

They may have lured in a few carpet-baggers on the heels of their sleight-of-hand, and perhaps they turned a quick profit, but from then on the Superquinn brand lost its lustre and became just one of many retailers hawking their wares to a critical customer, and competing on price.

And so I was unsurprised to see that the brand's new owners don't see the value in retaining the Superquinn name. In many ways, their own Supervalu brand, which champions local producers and personal service, had already stolen a march on a brand that lost faith in its own values, and the value it offered its customers as a result.

Others too have taken a lead from Crowning The Customer, and Irish retail has a number of young pretenders vying for the Superquinn crown. But as a child of the seventies, I still think it's a terrible pity that one of the few Irish brands from that time that could truly claim greatness, has fallen from grace and become largely irrelevant to the customer of today.

Over To You: Do you think it's possible to create a brand today that doesn't compete on price? Do any other Irish brands (emerging or established) come to mind?

When It All Adds Up

The decision of my mother, always a canny housekeeper, to shop at higher prices should have confused me, but somehow it didn't.

Growing up in the Dublin of the seventies meant that our family, like others across the city, had to carefully watch our outgoings. I can picture my mother at the kitchen table on a Saturday, doing the household accounts, and carefully balancing each penny earned with every penny spent. We lived comfortably enough, but my parents had to work hard to make those ends meet, and there were few extravagances in our home. While my mother was no natural beancounter, circumstances meant that she had to keep a close eye on what she spent and where she spent it.

And yet she chose to shop at Superquinn, where the prices were noticeably higher than at the local Quinnsworth (now Tesco).

With the sale of Superquinn in the news these past couple of weeks, I'm reminded of the apparently unaccountable behaviour of my mother. And of her neighbours and friends. And of the thousands of others like them across Dublin.

It was Oscar Wilde who said that the cynic is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Clearly, Mrs. Tannam was no cynic for she knew the price of everything on the shelves of her local supermarkets, but saw the value in shopping at Superquinn.

Superquinn at that time could claim to be one of the truly great Irish brands, one whose achievements were recognised by retailers worldwide. Sometimes, here in Ireland, we don't quite appreciate how Superquinn and its founder Feargal Quinn remain a byword for customer service and innovation overseas amongst those who know a thing or two about shopping. Whilst his more cynical competitors trumpeted the price of everything, this retail pioneer set about creating value at every turn.

Our local Superquinn operated from a cramped premises but somehow Feargal managed to make shopping there a genuinely pleasurable experience. He brought his bakers in-store and filled the aisles with the smell of freshly-baked bread. He told us about the farmers who produced his vegetables (long before 'farm to fork' became such a popular marketing ploy). He introduced leftover food-bins where shoppers could find complimentary bread to feed the ducks in the park and complimentary greens to feed their pet rabbits. But, for my mother, his master-stroke was the decision to remove sweet-displays from beside the checkouts, so as to offer his customers (many of them young mothers with toddlers in tow) a pester-free passage through that last step in the shopping-trip that can so easily end in tears. The significance of this was unmistakable. While others led into temptation, Feargal was the guardian angel, ready to forsake the easy profit of the pressurised or impulse buy.

There were many other innovations, too many to recall or mention, but the bottom line was that the Superquinn customer felt both cared for and valued, and, as a result, was quick to value the Superquinn difference and pay over the odds.

With household economics again demanding that housekeepers everywhere know the price of everything, too many of our retailers (including, sadly, Superquinn) are failing to show us the value in what they offer. They may pay lip-service to the idea but, despite the many innovations made in convenience shopping, they are making cynics of us all.

What a pity, for there is great profit to be made by those who are prepared to invest in making shopping a joyful experience and great benefits to be enjoyed by those who are invited to see the extraordinary value in it.