The Difficulty of Spending Money in Bulgaria – Reebok Store Case Study
This past weekend I decided to go shopping for shoes since I don’t own anything that is appropriate for walking around in light snow and slush – similar to the weather that hit us the previous weekend. I went down to Vitosha St. – the main shopping street in Sofia . Vitosha St. is like the 5th Avenue of Bulgaria. The only thing is that it’s in Bulgaria, so your local mall probably has the same, if not a better collection of stores. Vitosha has a few upscale-ish stores like United Colors of Benetton, but they are smaller versions, with only a fraction of the clothes collection you would see in the same store in such places as New York, London , Paris or Omaha .
Anyway, I found my way to a Reebok store and found a pair of shoes I liked on the wall. I picked up the shoe from the wall and noticed it was my size. Great, I’ll just try it on to see how it looks; alleviating the need (at least initially) to deal with Bulgaria’s consistently lacking customer service skills. I pick up the shoe and look around. This is when I noticed that there was only two small chairs – not even chairs, two small elevated pads – to sit on in the entire store. There were three large walls full of shoes. There were at least 15 people in the store looking at shoes. There was two – and only two – places to sit to try on shoes. And (surprise, surprise), now that I wanted to try on my shoe, people were sitting on both of them. It wasn’t for lack of space. In fact, there was quite a bit of empty floorspace throughout the store.
I saw several people walk in, look at a pair of shoes, look at the line to sit on the stool to try the shoes on, then walk out. Luckily for Reebok I’m stubborn. I waited patiently to sit on the stool until it finally opened up. I sat down and tried on the shoe. It looked good. I liked it. Just to make sure I wanted to try on the other shoe and also try a half size bigger. I call over the store employee and asked for the same shoe only a half size up. “No more,” he said. “No size at all?” I replied. “Nothing” he repeated. I wasn’t surprised. Either they sold out or they only carried a couple shoes, lest someone actually buy one. I suspect the latter. “Ok,” I said, “then give me the other half of this display pair so I can try on the other one.” He pointed at the one shoe I had on. “No, the other shoe.” He pointed to my one shoe again. I repeated “No, the other shoe” in Bulgarian. Kat repeated “No, the other shoe” in Bulgarian. Still he pointed at the same shoe. He seemed utterly confused why I would want the second shoe when I had one perfectly fine shoe on now.
Finally I got the point across that I was going to keep bothering him, all day if necessary, until he brought me the other shoe. Now remember, they have the only shoe of this type in the entire store. So, what is the first thing he does before going in the back to get the other shoe? He checks the size of my shoe. There’s only one back there – you don’t need to check the size!
Finally I get the second shoe. The both look good. They both feel good and I’m ready to buy. As this was a Reebok outlet store on one of the most exclusive shopping street in all the Balkans – they actually took credit cards, or so they said. So, I give him my VISA card. He looked at the card like it had dropped from outer space. He’s probably never seen one before. Anyway, the concept seemed to hit him all at once and he rushed back to swipe the card on the credit card machine.
“It don’t work.” He replied.
“What?”
“It don’t work.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, it don’t work.”
I figured either my card was shut off for some reason (which it shouldn’t have been since I told my credit card company I was moving to Bulgaria), he didn’t understand how to use a credit card machine, didn’t understand credit cards in general or just wasn’t the brightest bulb in the tree. Any or all of them would severely hinder a customer’s ability to spend money at the store.
Now here anyone but the most persistent shopper (or one looking to follow through on an interesting blog story) would stop, give up and deny Reebok their sale. I, however, went to the next card in my wallet – this one was my Bulgarian Bank’s ATM card. I was quite curious to see exactly how our Reebok employee would handle this one. Amazingly, this one went through just fine. It looks like our employee knows something about POS terminals after all.
Naturally when I got home I called VISA to figure out if there was a problem with my card. There was nothing wring with the card. In the exact words of the MBNA customer service rep, “We wouldn’t do anything to prevent you from using your $20,000 credit limit.” In fact, the rep said that no charges had even been attempted against the card. So, it looks like Reebok might want to train their Bulgarian employees how to use credit cards machines – since it does say they take VISA on the front door. Maybe they’ll even make a few more sales!
So, Reebok – I know this is Bulgaria , but you’re Reebok! Get with the program. Add some places to sit. Teach your employees to use credit card machines. I know Bulgarians must make it as difficult as possible for you to sell shoes, but you’ve got to overcome that. There is money waiting for you on the other side – I suspect lots of it. If you wish to use my consulting services I will visit every store you have in the region and write a detailed report on how to make them better.
