Speed shopping at its best

I’ve been travelling for business for a quarter of a century. I must have shopped at or just passed through hundreds – perhaps even thousands – of duty free outlets.

From tiny wheeled hand carts in Mogadishu airport to gleaming duty free halls in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

On the way I’ve had the pleasure of meeting some amazing people who work in this unique shopper world, including Colm McGloughlin, George Horan and the team who built Dubai duty free from the desert sands. This was in the early 1980s when Sheikh Rashid wooed them over from Shannon International Duty Free in Ireland to shape Dubai’s “face” on the world as a new duty free point to compete with Hong Kong.

Passing through a couple of duty free malls at two airports this week, I sat and watched once again a large number of people pass through an airport with limited time and purchase items, from cheap grog to expensive clothes and watches. And it was a good shopping experience.

As I watched a young Queenslander expertly and professionally manage the sale of two pairs of RM Williams boots to a couple who spoke no English, it struck me that I had never had a bad shopping experience in a duty free outlet.

Let me clarify that. I have always had great customer service, even if the shopping environment has been lacking. The whole terminal in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa had no air conditioning and the inside temperature was 45-degrees, but the nice lady selling me the J&B scotch beamed and laughed her way through the exchange in a mixture of French, Arabic and Somali. And it got me thinking: why is duty free shopping a better experience than domestic shopping?

When you pass from landside to airside as a travelling passenger at an airport the clock starts ticking. There is a finite amount of time to make a purchase decision before they call your name over the PA system – and that is embarrassing. It’s less embarrassing than walking the length of the aisle on a 747 last after holding up departure.

Airside for a duty free shop assistant, barista, barman or ground staff is its own little enclosed and truly gated community. People who work airside tend to stay in their jobs for some time and get to know each other. They are generally very happy in their jobs and it shows.

Every time I’ve worked airside for launches or promotions, the staff have had a huge sense of camaraderie, often across many cultural backgrounds. In the big Middle East airports the team can be Sri Lankan, Filipina, Gulf Arab, Canadian and Russian all working across many languages in the same store.

Service is quick, proactive, and the majority of the time delivered with a smile, open questions to understand our needs and great product knowledge. I imagine that having a narrower range of products to sell, pretty much stable pricing and shiny new or constantly updated selling premises helps too.

The whole process is usually better airside, I am guessing, because shoppers are time bound, so make decisions quickly and can’t pop back tomorrow. 90% of shoppers in store are buyers not browsers, so I guess that’s more fulfilling too.

That’s not to say that it isn’t sometimes frantic. In almost all the inbound duty free zones around the world, when planes all arrive at the same time, it really is a frenetic feeding frenzy of speed shopping. But we are met by smiling greeters handing out shopping baskets and promotional offers.

If you love retail but have never tried duty free retailing, give it a go. You could get hooked.

In his role as CEO of CROSSMARK, Kevin Moore looks at the world of retailing from grocery to pharmacy, bottle shops to car dealers, corner store to department stores. In this insightful blog, Kevin covers retail news, ideas, companies and emerging opportunities in Australia, NZ, the US and Europe. His international career in sales and marketing has seen him responsible for business in over 40 countries, which has earned him grey hair and a wealth of expertise in international retailers and brands. CROSSMARK Asia Pacific is Australasia’s largest provider of retail marketing services, consulting to and servicing some of Australasia’s biggest retailers and manufacturers.