Open Letter to Big Lots

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Five years ago, when I moved to Vegas, I first really discovered your store. It felt like an exciting treasure hunt akin to trips to the store with my mother where we never knew what treat we might find! I was able to pick up things at your store that were unique, that were high quality, and that were at huge discounts. When they closed the one near my house, I was disappointed, but I understood that the landlord was asking for too much rent. I went out of my way to visit other locations. Then things changed.

Big Lots is no longer the store it was before. It has become a diet version of other retailers. Rather than offering us values we couldn’t find anywhere else on other people’s product lines, now you have your own. Over the past two years, I have paid attention and kept some of your fliers because I can track like clockwork what you will have and when and what price it will cost. The fun and adventure and surprise of Big Lots is gone, as is most of my interest in going to your store.

I know someone probably told you that this was a good idea. My father still calls your chain “Odd Lots”, and other people who do so may mean so meanly. You probably wanted to get away from your image and attract better (cleaner) customers. You probably stand to make more money per item. What you may not have realized is that the customers who helped you during your rise have now been alienated as you change your focus. You may not realize that you will have fewer sales and perhaps less total income.

Changing focus led to the deaths of other stores and nations. Other retailers have fallen for the deceptive lure of bread and circuses in order to attract either a particular sales volume or a particular customer demographic. In trying to appeal to others you have left us behind. I no longer pop in to browse the shelves for surprise treasures, and as a consequence, I also no longer impulse buy at Big Lots. The more trendy you become, the more you risk losing the rest of the kitten caboodle. If you want to be the next Montgomery Wards or JC Penny, then that’s your choice.

Most of the shoppers in this nation are ordinary folks. While sometimes they want the latest and greatest, when times are hard and paychecks decrease as they are in Obama’s America, ultimately they choose to push their paychecks as far as they can. Trendy styles give way to sufficient apparel, and paying bills becomes more important than upgrading furniture, and putting food on the table matters more than whatever savings coupons you offer on things we don’t really need. It seems to me like you’re taking advice from the same people advising the President who parrot the OLD, not new as they claim, and tired plan to spend money we do not have to buy things we don’t need to impress people we don’t like. Trendy folks already have their favorite stores. I don’t visit those either.

When Saturn came out with the Astra, I was initially excited. I had waited for a long time for the heir apparent for my Saturn SL1 to arrive on the market. I went over to the dealership to drive one. I was disappointed greatly. The car was even more cramped than mine. The engine was irrationally arranged under the hood. It was a hatchback! It was plastic. It didn’t even get as good gas mileage as mine despite having the “same” engine. The saleswoman attempted to sell the car by pointing out that it had an access port for my iPOD. I turned to her and said, “You saw what I drove here. What makes you think I own an iPOD?” She told me that it was very popular in Europe. I told her I hated the cars they loved in Europe (which they like because they are small for the small streets, small garages, and small parking and ideal for the huge gasoline expense). I drove a BMW Isetta. Just because it says BMW on it doesn’t make it a good car. She told me that they had reached out to customers and tried to please them. I told her that I was a customer and I wasn’t interested in the Astra one whit.

You may of course do as you please. As one of your customers, like with the Saturn Astra, I am not impressed by the upgrade to your business. The customers you asked are not like me, and they are not interested in what I like. You would do well to have a contract from them promising to spend money in your store, because it has been months since I was there last, and only because you sell things I buy anyway for which I had a coupon. In making a new design, it is important to keep in mind what made your old design popular. If you abandon that completely, you had better offer us something else we value, or you lose your old customer base too. I don’t have to shop at Big Lots. As far as I’m concerned, it’s just a new, cleaner, Wal-mart with fewer selections. Like my father told me, I can go elsewhere and buy some cheap Chinese product and get a warranty on it with unquestioned returns.

Mostly, I miss the thrill of shopping at Big Lots and finding something amazing I had not expected to find. It’s no longer fun to shop there. Now, the stores are basically all the same, with all the same products and in basically the same places. Ask yourself what you’re doing that nobody else does and ask how much value that really has for your old customers. I kept my Saturn, which I still drive, and Saturn closed because at least in part they abandoned their old customers like me. We are the engine of business. Vroom vroom. Then there’s Apple; I still don’t own any iProducts.