One of the most dangerous fantasies that many business owners have is that because they have a “Great” product (let’s leave aside the question of deciding what a “Great” product is) then they can’t help but be successful.
I recently came across a pointed reminder of why this is not the case.
In a previous post I mentioned that a large employer, Optus, had moved out of North Sydney. As a result, foot traffic in the area had dropped off dramatically.
Now, opposite what had been the Optus building is a fantastic little bakery shop, the “St Honore Sourdough Bakery”. They truly do have a great product. One of my friends goes so far as to say they have the best bread in the world! I woudn’t go quite that far, but their bread (and croissants, pastries, cakes, pies and lots more) is truly excellent.
However, when Optus moved, their business slumped. I call in at the bakery quite often on my morning walk (before calling at Starbucks for my coffee!) and saw the slump for myself. There have been staff cutbacks and clearly business is way down.
So, it doesn’t matter how great your product is, if you don’t have the traffic you’re not going to make sales. And the bakery was (still is) totally dependent on one source of traffic. When that source of traffic dried up, so did the business.
So the lesson is to diversify your traffic whan you can. Now, the bakery’s business will recover when new tenants move into the area but this episode has highlighted how vulnerable the business is. It’s a reminder of another observation that if you don’t have a customer list, you don’t really have a business.