FAO remembered, and refreshed

The recent news that FAO Schwarz had been acquired by Toys ‘R’ Us sent me on a little impromptu journey down memory lane.

I’m not from New York, nor was I raised in any city with an FAO Schwarz toy store, but still the venerable retailer has played a big part in my life. I first met Dik Glass, then senior VP store development for FAO Schwarz, in 1989. He and I worked together on a cover story for another retail magazine, and forged a long and enduring friendship.

When my son Jake was born in 1993, Dik gave him a life-sized stuffed replica of Coco the gorilla. He proffered the gorilla in the middle of a presentation I was making in Houston, only because he knew it would make me laugh. (What Dik didn’t realize, though, was that to get Coco back to Nebraska from Texas, I had to buy an additional airline seat, something I never told him!). Coco has been a fixture in the Field House ever since and is still today a top-ranking treasure on Jake’s must-always-keep list.

Dik’s gift, and his friendship, sparked a keen interest in FAO Schwarz for both Jake and his older sister Holley. We visited the store in Kansas City, in Country Club Plaza, when it opened in 1994, and made the 215-mile trip east a quarterly trek for almost a decade. Every time we visited, each of my children would pick out one toy to take home -- and I would report back to Dik what the kids picked and how much we enjoyed our visit and the interaction with the store associates.

I haven’t spoken with Dik in years, and a quick Google this morning revealed that he is now CEO of MorseHarris Holdings, an Old Greenwich, Ct.-based project management firm that worked on the Hershey’s Times Square flagship in New York City. As well, the company -- whose founders are former FAO owners -- is responsible for FAO Schwarz’s real estate, design and construction.

That Dik is still involved with the creation of great stores designed to delight both children and their parents comes as no surprise to me. It’s what he was meant to do. I only hope that Toys “R” Us does what the company’s chairman and CEO promised it would do in today’s acquisition announcement: to “work tirelessly to preserve the distinctiveness and integrity of the FAO Schwarz stores and brand as we grow the business and, indeed, take the brand to even greater heights.”

-- Katherine Field

Making the ‘connection’ with Ann Taylor’s call center

I’m just as “connected” as the next gal -- e-mail, iPhone, texting, instant messages, Facebook, e-commerce, you name it. But a recent experience reminded me that even the coolest “apps” don’t hold a candle to the guidance a knowledgeable customer service agent can provide.

One of my friends is getting married and while I have a closet-full of potential ensembles for the occasion, I decided to treat myself to a new dress. I found the ideal little number on Ann Taylor’s Web site: a sleeveless black Ponte knit and satin cocktail dress adorned with a black satin belt and ruffle-trimmed crew neckline.

Rather than waste time calling or visiting local stores to find the dress in my size, I decided to order two sizes online, and try them on when they arrived, and then return the one that doesn’t fit.

After adding the two sizes to my virtual shopping cart, I wanted to give the dress’ image a final once-over before hitting the “checkout” icon -- this proved to be a mistake. When I returned to my shopping cart, one of the dresses mysteriously disappeared!

Worse, when I went back to the page where I originally ordered the dress, my size was no longer available. Someone obviously had the same buying intentions, but beat me to the punch!

I immediately called customer service and was connected with a lovely agent named Liz. After filling her in on my dilemma, she confirmed my fears -- the dress was no longer in stock online. “It’s a hot item,” she said. “I’m watching the inventory sell as we speak. But there is still hope. Have you tried our Style Finder service?”

I had not, so I asked Liz to explain what I was missing. Using a specific style number and size, the software hunts for the item across each store’s available inventory. When the desired merchandise is located, the application electronically places an order and the store is prompted to ship the merchandise to the shopper.

The shopper then provides the credit-card information to the customer service agent and is billed when the store ships the merchandise. There is a service fee of $7.50, as opposed to almost $10 for standard ground shipping online.

When I asked Liz what are the chances that she could find the dress, she said, “The service has a very high success rate, but there is a small chance that we may not find it. Overall, we have more happy customers than unhappy ones.”

Willing to take the risk, I abandoned my online order, gave Liz my Ann Taylor card information, wished her luck and hung up.

Within 15 minutes, I learned the sale was indeed meant to be. I received a confirmation e-mail explaining the dresses are available, and they would be shipped from a single location. The e-mail also said they were being shipped the next day and should arrive within three-to-five business days.

Clearly, this service has been a staple at physical stores for years, and thanks to Liz, now I know it’s an option through the call center. By integrating the solution across the two channels, Ann Taylor is upping the ante on customer service -- and it is working. The experience reminded me why I am a loyal Ann Taylor and LOFT shopper, and now I have a new strategy when shopping online.

Now comes the hard part -- I pray that I am equally satisfied with my purchase when it arrives.

Epilogue:
Literally minutes after filing this blog, there was a knock at our front door. It was UPS delivering my dresses -- only one day after placing the order. By the way, the size 10 won!

-- Deena M. Amato-McCoy

Greetings, Norman, and welcome to Wal-Mart

I grew up in north Louisiana, where the humidity is high, the cypress moss is heavy and the rivers and bayous are murky and thick. (You have to be from there to love it.)

One of my favorite activities as a child and young teen was traversing the waterways in a kayak with my dad and twin sister. We would start out early in the morning, with a lunch packed by mom and our oars in hand, and work our way through the green slime to get into the open water where we would alternate between floating and paddling. And beating nutria over the head.

That’s right, nutria. (For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a nutria is a swimming rat.) Hardly an excursion went by without one of those gross swimming rats trying to claw its way out of the water and into our craft. My sister and I would scream, “Nutria, yuck!” and begin to beat it over the head with our oars until it would let go of the kayak and plop back into the water.

Those wonderful memories were rekindled when I read the recent account of Norman the nutria, a “pet” bayou rat that allegedly freely roamed the aisles of an Abbeville, La., Wal-Mart. (Abbeville is way south in the state, where everyone should accept nutria, and armadillos, as a routine part of life, in my opinion.)

Apparently, Norman frightened a Wal-Mart shopper, who is now suing the retailer for “pain, suffering, mental anguish, fear, disabling injuries, and medical expenses.” Rebecca White said in her lawsuit that the Abbeville Wal-Mart associates allowed the nutria to run loose in the store and that, when she was pushing her shopping cart down an aisle, Norman ran out from behind a rack and frightened her. She said she injured her back and foot trying to protect herself from the nutria.

Reports described nutria as having bright orange buck teeth and weighing up to 18 lbs. That sounds about right.

Wal-Mart has declined comment about the pending lawsuit, but I would offer the following suggestion. Let Norman continue to be the mascot, but provide any leery shopper with a borrowed oar from the outdoor department.

-- Katherine Field