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Let me tell you the highly symbolic story of Wolfgangs’ Foot. If you walk down Water Street in Santa Fe you will see a gilded cowboy boot displayed discretely over a doorway. The doorway is the entry to the Lucchese store, the second retail shop opened by the famed San Antonio bootmaker. Displayed inside, among the clothes, buckles, and leather goods, is the wooden form once used to make boots for John Wayne. I’m visiting the shop with a friend, both of us in search of boots for our considerably less notable feet. My mission is to buy some ropers for motorcycle riding. My friends’ goal is to see if there was a boot for his short but high instep foot. We meet the boot guyChris Nelson comes to help. A lean and craggy Texan who could easily be a Marlboro man stand-in, Chris is one of those people who doesn’t own regular shoes, having worn boots since birth. I explain that I have never owned a pair of cowboy boots that fit properly. Not in New Jersey, which you can understand. Not in Massachusetts, which is also understandable. And not in Texas, which is a little perplexing. Since moving to Texas I have given away two pairs due to indescribable pain. Chris explains that boots are different, measures my feet, and returns with boots. They slip on and feel comfortable. This is not a major miracle but you would have a hard time convincing my feet. The boots are a size and a half larger than what I usually wear. Enter WolfgangEnter Wolfgang, who is also waiting for help from Chris. Wolfgang, a substantial person, could be a member of the Schwarzenegger family. “Yah, I had the same problem. I wore size 10. Chris gave me size 13. Now I come back for more boots.” Wolfgang is from Scottsdale and Munich. But he buys his boots in Santa Fe and he waits for help from Chris. We talk. I tell him I once lived in the Shwabing section of Munich. He says that he and his wife ride their Harley to Sturgis whenever they can. “You ride, too?” He asks. “A Harley? … aach, I bet you ride a BMW.” Chris, meanwhile, is not intimidated by my friends’ high instep. His boots will be custom made. They are ordered. Six weeks? No problem. As we leave the store my friend shakes his head. Like most men, both of us were born with a genetic defect that makes it nearly impossible to buy clothing. Every second in a retail store is as important as it is rare. Miss the thirty to forty-five minutes a year that it is possible for us to actually buy clothing and nothing gets bought. “You know, after that, I don’t think I could ever buy boots anywhere else”, my friend says. Which brings us to the interpretation of this highly symbolic event. Drive along any highway in America or visit any Mall and you will find collections of very large boxes. These are big time retail stores that stock absolutely everything. If it exists, they stock it. They are open nearly 24 hours a day to serve us, if only we can find a salesperson in all that cubeage and if only that salesperson has worked there for longer than a week. I can lose my thirty to forty-five minutes finding my way from the parking lot at stores like this. For Wolfgang, for me, and for my friend, Chris Nelson is nearly priceless. He is worth more than billions in mute inventory, stacked deep and sold cheap. And Lucchese, the boot company founded in 1883, may just have found itself on the leading edge of a new trend in retailing. What Stanley Marcus had to sayHave I stumbled onto something? I call Stanley Marcus, a man easily lured into retail stores but so persnickety about his suits that he invested in Oxford suits to assure his continued supply. I tell him about Wolfgang and his foot. “The real trick to the whole thing is to meet the customer with a person who cares. Sales has been so corrupted. It’s not about selling the most expensive thing, its about selling what’s right for the customer. Anyone who gives good, honest service is a great salesman. All he needs to do is listen to his customer and understand what the problem is.”, he said. Amen. (c) A.M. Universal, 1998 |
