The Ultimate Failure of Business

I heard a toy store owner relate to a reporter today that parents walking into her store are asking to see "any toys NOT made in China." After this most recent toy scare in which children receive the effect of the date rape drug from swallowing Aqua Dots, who can blame parents? Every parent's instinct is to protect his or her child.

Pet owners have also experienced scares recently after the loss of several pets to tainted food. Since I had been alerted to beware of the contents of pet food years ago, I am not among them. After reading warnings about the content of pet food and the origins of that content, I heeded the warnings and researched which companies offered nutrient-rich, naturally-produced foods. Consequently, I now feed my dogs food from companies that I researched.

However, as consumers we do not have time to research the companies of all the products that we buy, and, therefore, we place a high level of trust in the stores from which we purchase products. We trust them to do the research for us and to stock products that are safe for us and for our loved ones, whether human or animal. I recently ran across a wonderful example of this trust in action. Sandy, the lady who orders and stocks the pet food at Festival Foods, told me that recently she had called to check on a backorder of a dog treat. She was told that the boat was delayed getting into port.

"Boat?" Sandy exclaimed. "I thought this was American made!"

Obviously, it wasn't. Sandy told me that she no longer stocks that treat. She was concerned about the safety of pets whose owners shop at Festival. Sandy is working to earn and retain the trust of her customers. As a customer, I greatly appreciate her efforts.

Sandy is an excellent example of what we all must do for our customers. We must do the research that our customers cannot do. We must keep our eyes and ears open so that we know what is going on and respond appropriately either by stocking or not stocking that product to ensure the safety of our customers. We must remember the trust placed in us by our customers and exercise diligence so that we uphold that trust. While I realize that there will be examples of issues that we could not foresee, such as toy store owner’s knowing the unsafe contents of Aqua Dots, having the safety of our customers as our top priority benefits both our customers and our businesses.

After all, our customers and our businesses are interconnected. We rise and fall together. Beyond the ethics of looking after the well-being of our fellow man, on a practical level keeping your customers safe means that they will return to do more business with you. If the business that they transacted with you did not harm them, they will return. Getting customers back to transact more business is profitable and develops them as customers. As Peter Drucker says, "The sole purpose of business is to develop a customer."

What the toy store owner experienced was the opposite. Customers walking into that toy store requesting to see “any toys NOT made in China” were un-developing themselves as customers of toys manufactured in China. Their loss of trust in Chinese-produced toys drove them to be certain that they were not buying a toy that might hurt a child whom they loved.

Selling customers something that hurts them or their loved ones un-develops a customer. It is the ultimate failure of business.