Goodbye, Dear Readers, Goodbye!

This is our last "Bedtime Story for Retailers." Like most of what we, Laurie Karzen and Charlotte Morrill, have done, even the first sentence is not simple. We think it is our last, but things have a way of popping up again in our lives. Moreover, our column in Gifts & Decorative Accessories, one of the happiest things we have ever done, is really called "Can This Store Be Saved?"

Between ourselves, we have always called our column Bedtime Stories for Retailers. So, before you settle down and go to sleep and forget us, and before we wave our last goodbye, we thought it would be fun to sit down and tell you the story of how it all began …

Way back in the dark ages of 1985, Charlotte was reinventing stationery design and Laurie was running a successful retail store. In those far off days, not every retailer made a profit, as we are sure you all do today. Charlotte remembers first noticing Laurie when she, Charlotte, was trying to sell her something. Laurie smiled, said she loved the product, but that it was not right for her store. Charlotte turned around and thought, "Well, my goodness, here is someone special."

We formed an informal company called CRM&ME to help the small and not-so-small gift retailer, and a few manufacturers, survive and prosper. From the beginning we were (and still are) close in our shared view of retailing. Our common background in manufacturing and marketing has convinced us that success requires combining equal parts imagination and homework. The owner of a store or plant must have a vision of an exciting environment or product and must do the hard work and make hard choices for it to thrive. A magical facade only makes a profit when it is backed by good, solid strategies and bookkeeping. We visit stores that are adorable retail mousetraps, but are failures. Or plants that are marvels of good management, but produce uninteresting products. We have tried to help change our small part of retailing.

Physically our partnership was, and is, oceans apart. Charlotte has lived on the East Coast since 1985, and Laurie has always lived in California. Today, Charlotte looks out at the Atlantic Ocean from her island in Maine. Laurie lives in San Francisco, overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge and the Pacific Ocean. Our business, however, has always required that we travel — to consult with retailers or manufacturers and to conduct trade show seminars.

As we traveled, we studied retail environments: windows, promotions, displays, signs, gift wrapping, cash desks, etc. And we had FUN. We felt as though we had been given permission to wander around a big candy store and taste everything. We actually did just that when we consulted for a candy store down south and when we were judges for the gourmet section of a gift show in Atlanta.

The fun was not limited to our jobs. We always juggled several hats. We worked, we moved, we had a failure or two and several major successes. We decorated and redecorated our homes, one of us was divorced and remarried once or twice, and the other has been married almost 50 years. We became grandparents. The first time we learned that we were to be grandparents we were in Paris doing a trade show. We took half a day off, went into a posh baby shop on the Rue Royale and outfitted the baby-to-be with the last word in cashmere baby sweaters, etc. In addition, we studied and took notes on the shop's merchandise and service.

We tried, as you all do, to balance our lives and juggle our hats successfully. Like you, we were constantly reinventing our products, our service, and ourselves. We started by filling an empty niche in the stationery business with a personalized pad book. Then we saw that retailers wanted sources, so we wrote the "CRM&ME Sourcebook." When our clients had difficulty attending trade shows we developed a Shop-the-Show service.

Each time we saw a retailing need we tried to fill it. We produced our own video on selling techniques — by propping up a video camera in the living room and photographing ourselves as "talking heads." We wrote newsletters and conducted seminars. We consulted for shop owners who were selling everything from candy to wrought iron furniture. We designed displays and showrooms for reps, consulted for manufacturers, and tried, just as you do, to keep our business fresh, inspired, and fun!

One of us is tall and plump; one of us is short and svelte. We decided we needed a unified look to present to the world so we dressed in black from head to toe and each wore an Hermès scarf. Between us, we have the largest collection of Hermès scarves in the continental United States. We watched how Hermès merchandised its scarves and used the technique in a seminar.

Life was not always glamorous. We discovered that we could accomplish wonders if we holed up in a hotel room for eight or 12 hours and worked. Those sessions were conducted in our pajamas on our beds, or on the floor, while we glued, tied bows, and assembled props for seminars. We used a lot of room service. During one marathon in a Chicago hotel, we needed a sugar rush so we tipped a hotel waiter to go out and buy us a bag of candy bars. We sat on the beds and ate every single one. No candy bar will ever taste that good.

We critiqued each other's luggage and packing. If one had a new travel gadget, the other needed it too. One year, in New York, we spent hours at the old Henri Bendel on West 57th Street and up at Zittomer's on Madison Avenue buying travel packing fitments. We had some of them embroidered with our monograms … and used the experience in several seminars on personalization.

We liked the Birmingham gift show and the Top Drawer show in London. We learned a lot at the Frankfurt gift show, but our favorite shows have been in France. We can make ourselves understood in French, but you do not need to speak the language to profit from attending European shows. Just seeing the displays makes you think in new ways. We remember walking along an icy street in Paris and stopping to take off our warm gloves so that we could make notes about the wonderful "Sale" signs we saw. We used those notes in seminars and our column.

When one of our daughters was planning her wedding, we shopped for lace tablecloths in the Paris flea markets, and saw things that we could describe to American retailers. We found a small French couturier (who spoke no English) to dress the mother of the bride. We learned from her what could be accomplished in a very small shop!

We once several spent days trying to find the source for the exotic and very wonderful cellophane that a Parisian retailer had used for our gift wrap. Finally, while attending the fourth trade show of that trip, we found it.

"Monsieur, je cherche … " The salesman looked at us and said, "It's all right honey, I come from Michigan and I can tell you where to buy it in the United States." That cellophane was the main prop we used in seminar after seminar on gift baskets.

We were enchanted with customer service in Paris and credit card signs in Dallas. We found fabulous paper in Frankfurt and saw the Berlin Wall start to come down. We visited East Berlin (where our neat black dresses and French scarves caused the impoverished people to stare) by actually going through the old Check Point Charlie.

Our favorite trip to France and England was the year we took a small band of very professional shop owners with us. We conducted a traveling seminar on European retailing. All of us discussed merchandise, inventory, sale techniques, and sales and shop management nonstop for ten days. We had a wonderful time.

We learned about color and display in Mexico City where we photographed the hotel restaurant so we could remember the colors. We saw a sign in a Boston store that said, "Please leave with the same number of children that you came in with." That sign was responsible for a Gifts & Decarticle on signs.

In Los Angeles, Charlotte taught Laurie the way to remember the order of Hill, Olive, Grand, Flower, and Figueroa streets by chanting, "Go up the Hill of Olives and Grand Hopes to pick a Flower on Figueroa." While we were chanting we consulted for a very successful gift basket retailer, whose business was overwhelming her garage, her husband, her children, and her marriage.

In Denver, we visited Cry Baby Ranch, one of the most beautifully retailed children's shops in the country. We did seminars for FTD and the Photo Marketing Shows in Las Vegas … and learned about branded merchandise in the casino gift shops.

We hired a car and driver to venture into the wilds of Long Island to visit a lady who manufactured leather beeper cases in her basement. She was doing a large business with street sellers in New York who communicated with each other by beeper. (We did not ask what they sold.) Beepers did not last long enough for us to help her widen her business to all of your stores.

We learned that function was more important than form when we dyed our tennis shoes hot pink to wear at a trade show and nearly died from hot feet. While eating sushi in New York, we saw our first personalized chopsticks and had to have them. That taught us how important it could be to create the desire in your customer for a new item. Our wedding list seminars and one or two of our Gifts & Dec articles were the result.

The displays we developed for a candy store in Raleigh were dull. We turned the plush Easter Bunnies with their backs to the window and learned, again, that the unexpected often works.

A retailer we consulted for in Roanoke went to a different nail salon each week so that she could promote her business to new people. She greeted everyone on the street, inviting them to come to see her at her store. She was a walking promotion machine for her business and taught us a great lesson.

We saw a cheap crystal chandelier painted white in a store in Seattle. There were small gifts hanging from it on ribbons; an idea that we used in an article.

We have conducted our business and written our articles, using phones, faxes, and email. We have compared notes, made lists, written proposals, and planned seminars in cars, taxis, planes, and hotel rooms. We have worked while perched on park benches in London, Paris, and Mexico City. Oh yes, and in 687,248,395 airport waiting rooms. (As you know, we never exaggerate!)

We have seen wonderful marketing ideas everywhere. We have also seen retailers struggling every day to be creative, be different … and make a profit. They, like us, are juggling several hats in the air.

When we were asked to write, "Can This Store Be Saved?" for Gifts & Decorative Accessories, it was a problem for us. We were not sure that busy retailers really read printed helpful stuff. And, though we tried, we did not enjoy writing our first articles. They were printed boring stuff. One day in 1995, in desperation, we invented a store called The Gift Box, owned by a retailer whose name was Dorinda. We described her store and her problems in a Gifts & Dec article called, "You Are Having Fun ... But Are You Making Money?" You responded with enthusiasm, so we began to create fictitious stores and owners, give them problems and tell how they were solved.

We still enjoy each other and we still love the business of retailing, but we have been juggling many hats. Keeping them all in the air is more than two full time jobs. Some of those hats have to come down and be put away. So, we have stopped our constant travel and decided, with regret, to stop writing "Bedtime Stories for Retailers."

We are grateful for your support and the consistent encouragement of the editors at Gifts & Decorative Accessories. We will watch your retailing progress with great interest and respect.

Good night!

Since it first appeared in January 1995, Laurie Karzen and Charlotte Morrill's column has been one ofGifts & Decorative Accessories most popular features. In the future, we will periodically run a selection of their past articles under the title, "Karzen and Morrill Classics."