Specialty Stores and Jacks of All Trades
Specialty shop or jack of all trades, what’s a retailer to do? Thoughts from the Value Management Institute’s Michi Shioya.
“Perhaps it was staying home during Golden week. The rebound was ferocious. I felt sharply the sinfulness articulated by such sayings as “Too much is as bad as too little” or Muda, muri, mura (wasteful, over the top, too inconsistent).
“From spring through early summer the streets are filled with the color black. You see “Freshmen” (students and new hires) all over the place. They all look so sharp and determined. It’s sad that after a little while they will fall into familiar corporate habits and disappear from sight.”
This is the way Shioya begins his VMI Genki Mail Bulletin Board, No. 95. The style is very Japanese, starting with a reference to the season and seasonal events. In this particular season, new seasons and new hires remind us of a recurring debate in recent years: Which is better for a company, the generalist whose flexibility makes him easy to move from job to job, acquiring the experience that will make a good manager, or the specialist who brings valuable skills to one particular job? Mostly this debate concerns new hires employed by large corporations. Shioya relates it instead to the restaurant and retail industries and notes the difference between starting a business in a big city versus starting a business in a town in the countryside.
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