Pickin' at the bones of the beast..

Let's start off with a why. Why am I writing my posts like this?
I write them out like this, all personal and off-point, because when I do structured reporting on a researched subject matter, I tend to thoroughly enjoy the structure that the researched documents are written in. Slowly, but surely my writing language becomes the same as theirs, I look back at the research documents more and more, and it's not long before I am writing out the researched document(s), word for word.
If I keep my writing casual, and stray off-point every now and then; my writing and concepts stay my own, plus we can all have a bit of fun with the reading/writing situation.
This time round, we'll be doing some short sharp answers (in theory).. Maybe I'll get creative and add pictures!

Check out the bottom of this post to view the added image!

MYER BASICS

Wow, I'm looking over the stuff I highlighted on the annual report. Has anyone else noticed that when you're highlighting this sort of document, you start off great, highlighting the really key stuff, keeping it neat and tidy, engaging and useful.. But then, not long after, you wind up just highlighting blocks of text. I've got almost a page that's completely highlighted.. Ridiculous.

This is going to be fun.. Or is it?

12,500 Team Members
51,000 Shareholders
1,200 Suppliers Globally
67 Stores Australia Wide

11 Core Product Categories;

Womenswear;
Menswear;
Miss Shop (Youth);
Childrenswear;
Intimate Apparel;
(And here I thought the above all came under "CLOTHING")
Beauty, Fragrance and Cosmetics;
Homewares;
Electrical Goods;
Toys;
Footwear, Handbags and Accessories;
General Merchandise.

Five-point-plan Operational Strategy

1. Improve Customer Service
2. Enhance Our Merchandise Offer
3. Strengthen Our Loyalty Offer
4. Build a Leading Omni-Channel Offer
5. Optimise Our Store Network

1) Improve Customer Service

• Delight customers 
• Driven by Customer and Team Member Feedback
• Build Customer Service and Performance-based business-wide culture
• Service improvement; Training and selling skills programs, reward and recognition, improving staff availability
• Efficiency improvement; Faster delivery of stock to shop floor, reducing theft.
• Leveraging Technology; Delivering an improved experience for customers in store, online, through customer service centre.

2) Enhance our merchandise offer

• Delight customers
• Want to be first choice for Fashion, Cosmetics and Home
• Largest range of desired new, fashionable, quality, valued brands and styles
• 66 brands owned licensed and distributed - MYER exclusive
• Vertically-integrated Myer Exclusive Brand model; 
• Managing; design, development and sourcing of wanted brands gives significant control and flexibility + two sourcing offices in Asia + world-class supply chain + updated IT and merchandise systems = speed to market and effective inventory control = competitive advantage
• Acquire more brands

3) Strengthen loyalty offer

• MYER one loyalty program is one of Australia's leading loyalty programs with 5 million members & 6 million cards in circulation
• Four reward levels; Member, Silver, Gold, Platinum (Based on annual spending in Myer) {Platinum is invitation from CEO only}
• Members - +2 credits per $1 spent - if 2,000 points gained, get $20 gift card (on average, customers spend 3.8 times gift card on redemption) - Credits also earned through MYER affiliates and MYERVisaCard

4) Build a leading omni-channel offer

• Customers expect online inspiration, information and digital commerce.
• MYER online; MYER is now global.

I am now speaking to you from half-way through summarising the key concepts of MYER as a business.. I quickly looked through other peoples' blogs, and see that the detail I'm getting into, is seriously un-needed. But quickly I realised, it's another key value I was brought up with; "You can't know where you're going, if you don't know where you've been." Which, for me, basically means you can't push forward or see a glimpse of the future until you've connected with your past. How am I supposed to make opinions, judgements on MYER's business decisions and strategies if I don't first know who they are and what they're trying to do?
So, even though I'm doing more work than I need to.. I will push forward with my original plan.

• Previous investments in a Merchandise management system, point-of-sale system, world-class supply chain = foundations for effective inventory management; Therefore giving competitive advantage
• Using strong brand, depth of offer, store network, popular loyalty program; Sure to become leading omni-channel retailer
• Integrating marketing, balancing traditional media with innovation and digital marketing opportunities; Digital marketing and social media are campaign norms.

5) Optimise our store network

• Customers want; to Touch and Feel products in store + engage with knowledgable and helpful staff.
• Delivering seamless customer experience across all digital and retail points using strong store network and omni-channelling is major optimisation point
• Maximise returns per square metre of store network
• Inspiring shopping environment for customers
• Focused on high productivity through store layout enhancements, new and replacement stores, improving floor space efficiency through refurbishments

^^ So very long and boring.. Let's spruce it up..

This image was designed and constructed by me, the author of this blog; Clifford Power.
The 'MYER ismystore' logo was retrieved as a .svg file from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Myer.svg & all information was gathered from the Myer Annual Report 2013, retrieved from http://investor.myer.com.au/Reports/
This image was made to display average text as something exciting!

I may add more later, depends how I go with the writing..