If you are reading this from outside the UK (and people actually do) this is a metaphor for big business and how it kills what used to be - how small business is the antidote to big business, at least for people like me.
I live in Nottingham and have done for 30 years.
One of the biggest industries here is Boots (the chemist) set up by the visionary Jesse Boot. It has become an institution in British society. Everybody went to Boots for prescriptions, medicines and then later beauty products and sandwiches and hairdryers.
Boots has a place on high street in the UK which seems unshakeable, like Marks & Spencer’s.
Today I went to Boots to get my flu jab. I have interacted with Boots in several different ways over the past few years and they’re dying.
A little while ago, Boots was bought by Walgreens, an enormous American corporation. I know people that work for Boots and how that worked out and how people are swinging back and forwards across the Atlantic on planes to get things right.
The bottom line is that the people who work for Boots work for Walgreens, they don’t work for Jesse Boot.
Boots is about shareholder value and when you walk into a Boots now, you completely understand that.
They sell what’s selling. It’s about ‘sell it quickly’ but reduce your costs and increase your margins.
It’s about check outs with no people at them and one person running between.
It’s about Pharmacists who are too busy to talk to you.
It’s about someone who wants to give you a flu vaccine inside three minutes giving you the minimum amount of spiel, whilst the CCTV camera watches to make sure they don’t do anything that could get Boots sued.
It is totally and completely impersonal in every personal way.
It’s the opposite of what Boots was for.
It’ll work just now because Walgreens and the people that work there are rinsing it as hard as they can, but then it will die.
People will spread out and go somewhere else; they’ll try to find the humans.
A large proportion of people still try to buy cheap, but someone else will be cheaper.
Right now is the time to set up a pharmacy that is more expensive, more human and more caring. Not everybody will go there, but enough will. Start with the minimum viable audience as Seth Godin tells you, and people will talk about it and they’ll come.
The more we dehumanise every aspect of the society we live in, the more people will crave human contact.
Blog Post Number – 4361
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