Trader Who?

I love Trader Joe's in the US. I like to idly browse the shelves, spend time over the fruit and vegetables and chat with staff over the deli counter. Yes Trader Joe's is a supermarket, although super suggests it is set up like a Woolworth ( US, no S ) when in fact it feels much closer to what we all want in our shopping day, a warm reception on entering, staff that believe you really are the customer and an eclectic, surprise me with your weekly specials personal kind of store.

One of my favourite things at Traders, are the hand drawn price tags, no not the black marker pens used at JB Hi Fi, although they do have personality all their own, but artistically drawn tags that attract the eye and your attention. How much easier and cheaper would it be to just have them all digitised and printed en mass, but that gives you no personality or scope to entertain and bemuse while selling your wares.

Yes Traders is working on being that grocery store from childhood memories. That little corner store where you knew the manager and he would always treat you right because he knew how important every customer was and what one disparaging remark could do to his local trade. Traders has a few more customers to worry about and while Mr Jones on the corner had a few hundred items to mark and know, Trader Joe's has approximately 4000 items changing across 350 stores US making the price tags an even more perplexing and costly decision.

In rough maths, it equates to nearly 1.5 million price and description tags, many changed weekly, that Traders provides for the pleasure of its customers. Not provided from a factory somewhere in the urban wasteland but by artists employed by individual stores. Artists that work with the local community in their endeavors to high light produce and products that vary across the country. Without a doubt, this gives Traders that unique small town grocery feel we'd all like to encounter in our amped up lifestyle of how quickly can I get out of this warehouse supermarket and onto the lounge.

Trader Joe's has decided to forego the traditional trappings of global conglomerate providores and has embarked on a winding road bringing back personal charm and effective sales service to what is a factory setting where you race through the aisles grabbing the bare necessities and speaking to no one. They carry specialised items branded with their own style like Trader Jose mexican, Trader Mings chinese, Trader Giottos italian etc etc, all the way to Trader Darwins vitamins, to give you the feeling they are making them just for you. Also known for the amount of wine they carry, Traders started out testing thousands of wines and ended up famous for their $1.99 Charles Shaw wines fondly known as "two buck chuck". A sense of humour no doubt.

Having said all that, Trader Joe's still needs to make money, which it does in truck loads, over $8 billion per year while keeping 5,500 employees happy and content. So there you have a Fortune 500 giant with thousands of employees feeling like they are your local grocery store with all the emotional attachment that brings and still able to satisfy shareholders.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Trader Joe's, is its ownership by the giant German supermarket chain responsible for over 8,000 Aldi stores worldwide. That last fact should give all companies hope that they can humanise and connect with their customers no matter how large or small they are.