Clichés: Is Retail Really Detail? 

Stephen Fry once quipped, “It’s a cliché that most clichés are true, but then like most clichés that cliché is untrue.”   

I read that quote four times and it still makes my head spin.

I don’t like clichés. For the most part they’re said without much thought; copied because they sound  compelling, or simply because they’ve been said so many times people think they must be true.  I see them as a kind of linguistic flatulence.  

As someone who listens intently to song lyrics I can also be completely alienated by an otherwise decent tune when the writer lets a little lyrical gas go. He or she finishes a verse, or even worse a chorus that I’ll have to hear repeatedly, with a phrase so predictable that I could sense it coming from a mile away, even though I’ve never heard the song before.  

You know the kind of thing, they rhyme “take my hand” with “understand” or “girl” with “world”. For a particularly painful example take a look at the lyrics to Des’ree’s Life;  barring the surreal choice of “I’d rather have a piece of toast” to rhyme with “ghost” and “most” (no I’m not kidding) I’ll wager there isn’t a non-clichéd couplet in the entire song.

Then again, don’t look. I just did to remind myself of why I dislike it so much and now it’s annoying me again.

All of which brings me to “Retail is detail”.

I’ve heard this phrase a lot, usually accompanied by raised eye-brows and a condescending head nod, intended to convey that someone really should have realised that the bad thing that has happened could have been averted if people had paid a bit more attention to things.

I’d like to say that I’m writing this article to disprove this particular cliché. That a group of diligent social psychologists had conducted a huge study and found that slap-dash retailing is the only way to go if you want to make money from a store.   That they’d found that customers appreciate retail sloppiness, it reminds them of their own imperfections, and causes them to buy in a wave of empathy.

But I can’t. 

Turn the page to find out just how important details are to consumers…   

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