The most expensive mistake in independent retail

Knowing yourself and knowing your customer are often one and the same. The best retailers understand their customer deeply and build businesses that reflect how they actually want to shop.

Patrick Herning built 11 Honoré, the first luxury e-commerce platform focused on inclusive sizing, and thirteen lune, focused on inclusive beauty and retail. Now an investor and advisor, he shares what he's learned about customer experience and what small retailers can do to differentiate themselves from the larger players 

—Interview by Marcy Medina, edited by Bianca Prieto

What have your ventures taught you about customer experience?

The biggest lesson is that customer experience isn’t a layer you add on. It is the business. It begins with what you buy, how you price, how you communicate, how easy you are to navigate and how consistent you are. Every touchpoint either builds trust or erodes it.

Today’s customer is highly informed and has endless options. Loyalty is no longer given, it is earned repeatedly. For smaller or independent retailers, that means you cannot afford to be generic. The advantage is specificity, knowing your customer better than anyone else and making them feel understood. When you get that right, you create emotional loyalty, not just transactional loyalty. That is what drives repeat business.

How do small retailers compete when they can’t win on price?

They should not try. Competing on price is a race to the bottom, and independents will lose to scale players and e-commerce platforms. The opportunity is to compete on curation, context, and connection.

Curation means editing more aggressively. The best small retailers do not offer more, they offer better. They remove friction by making decisions for the customer. Context means explaining why something matters, why now and why it is worth buying. Connection means building real relationships, remembering the customer, following up and creating a sense of community.

When you do those three things well, you are no longer selling a commodity. You are selling taste and trust, and price becomes less relevant.

How should small retailers adjust their buying strategy today?

Customers are more intentional. They research more and buy with greater purpose, expecting versatility and value from what they choose. That requires a more disciplined approach to buying. Tighter assortments, more depth in what you believe in and fewer products without a clear role.

Every item should have a reason to exist, whether that is tied to occasion, need state, or emotional appeal. Retailers also need to think in terms of outfits or solutions, not individual SKUs, helping the customer understand how to use what they are buying. This can also lead to bundling or marketing products together, which not only provides a service and solution for customers but also ups your average order value.

The strongest retailers today act more like editors than inventory managers. They guide decisions rather than simply offering options. If you strive to become the trusted source or authority in your community by talking to every person who comes into your store, posting authentic content on your social media and targeting locals and visitors with direct mail campaigns, you’ll create deeper and longer-lasting relationships with your customers.

The  SKUpe's Take

Walk your floor this week and ask yourself how many products are there because you believe in them versus how many are there because they seemed like a safe bet. That gap is where generic creeps in. The retailers who win on curation aren't carrying more, they're carrying less, with a clear answer for why every single thing deserves to be there. That's the edit worth making.

Thanks for reading this week's edition!

You can reach the newsletter team at theskupe@mynewsletter.co. We enjoy hearing from you. 

Interested in advertising? Email us at newslettersales@mvfglobal.com 

The SKUpe is curated and written by Marcy Medina and edited by Bianca Prieto.