Bill Harbaugh started an indoor garden bed-maker in 1974, cultivating plants from plants of his former college professor. Thirty years later, as CEO of Dead Perfect, he has become an exemplar of brick-and-mortar retail success. But can a business grow by word of mouth and brick-and-mortar customers?
Technology is certainly bringing the customer closer to the product, but Harbaugh said that the online shopping culture still needs to respect the main thing that customers come to the store for: to touch and to see the product, and ideally put it in their own hand.
But to close the gap between e-commerce and physical shopping, other brick-and-mortar retailers will have to do more than rely on word of mouth. Harbaugh said he’s excited to see what any of the major retail companies might try at incorporating social media.
“I think there’s a lot of really promising stories to tell. We’re in a real-time environment right now. Retail has never been so fast-paced. You just gotta evolve as fast as the consumers are evolving.”
You can read more about Dead Perfect here.
Read the full story at Quartz.
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