You should know

There is a barber received two apprentices, after the apprentice, the two apprentices have raised the capital to seek development in the metropolis. They each own a store, also downtown. Big apprentice specialized for ordinary men and women to do some popular hair, what popular do what, quickly earned some money. Two apprentices, however, specially designed some unique hairstyles or image designs for customers who love fashion, have good taste and understand fashion. At first, no one knew him, so some of his avant-garde, fashionable design ideas were not accepted by the market, the business was very dismal. The elder disciple said to the younger one proudly, "You should know that in this world, there are a hundred times more ordinary men and women than fashionable men and women."

But after a few years, the situation changed. The little apprentice finally became a master of image design through his own hard work. Many famous people and stars in the world came to him for design. He has more money than he can count. One day, the elder apprentice and the younger apprentice met by chance. The little apprentice smiled and said to the older one, "You should also know that in this world, fashionable men and women need to beautify their images one thousand times more than ordinary men and women, and the price is also one thousand times more expensive!"

The so-called successful enterprises have similar success experiences, while the failed enterprises have different reasons for failure. While Chinese people were still falling victim to overexpansion policies in Yangcheng and Japan, Montgomery Ward, a century-old American company, was experiencing the bitter consequences of an overly conservative zero-growth policy across the ocean.

In 1872, salesman Alan Montgomery Ward opened his first mail-order store in Chicago. He made a list of the items for sale and told farmers who lived far from the city how to place an order with a single purchase order, promising that if the customer did not like the purchase, he could return it to the company for an exchange without paying freight. To make a big impact, Ward began a series of promotions, showing off the company's merchandise in a touring van with a few people, as well as entertaining customers by inviting them to visit the company's Chicago plant. These measures are all new to marketers today.

There was no doubt that Ward's promotion was a hit. 285,000 people visited the factory, becoming Ward's first customers and driving the company's business. At first, his orders were only one page. By 1874, his catalogue was a 72 page booklet. In 1884 there were 240 pages and nearly 10,000 items. His main competitor and future retail giant, Sears, was founded in 1886 and sold only one item by mail -- watches. In the decades that followed, until World War II, Sears never did more business than Montgomery.

Montgomery and Sears went for department stores in the 1920s, when mail-order business was in steep decline as better roads and automobiles made it easier for farmers to shop. By the end of 1929, Ward had 500 stores, while Sears had just over 300. During the lean years of the early 1930s, both companies consolidated existing stores, eliminated loss-making ones, and conducted careful planning and research for new ones. As a result, both companies weathered the worldwide crisis well.

After World War II, Sears embarked on a larger expansion campaign, betting on a postwar economic revival and making a $300 million bet to expand its retail stores. Its sales jumped from $1 billion to $2 billion in the first two years after the war. The Montgomery Company took the opposite path. Avery, the new president, predicted that a depression would come after the war. "The deterioration of the postwar economy will make us unfamiliar with what we knew before," he predicted.

Under this zero-growth policy, Avery deposited millions of dollars in the bank, which matched the reserves of the best and leading banks in the United States at the time. As a result, from 1938 to 1954, the Montgomery Company retreated rather than grew, shrinking from 600 stores to 508, while the wily Sears expanded from 496 to 718, leaving its rivals far behind. It was in this caution that Montgomery ceded his ground to others and lost his share of the competition. To this day, it has not built that basis of competition.

In the years since, Montgomery has changed hands, merged and expanded, and while it retains its place in America's top ten retail stores, its niche has, sadly, become increasingly blurred. In the past, it has always been popular with American residents for selling mass goods, but later, it changed its original intention to go to the middle and high end line, its department store has become a collection of household appliances, home decoration, household goods, clothing, car repair, gold and silver jewelry as one of the comprehensive shopping malls, completely lost the original characteristics of cheap business.

Meanwhile, large retail companies such as Wal-Mart, Sears, Kmart, and Penney clung to the market that targeted low - and middle-income consumers, and specialty stores sprang up across the country to grab market share, making life harder for Montgomery. In 1995, the company made a slight loss. In 1996, the company lost $249 million; In the first half of 1997, the company lost $250 million. With $1.4 billion in debt, suppliers unwilling to continue supplying goods and banks unwilling to provide new loans, Montgomery filed for bankruptcy protection.

"Montgomery died decades ago," says a senior American retail consultant. "Now they're just trying to make a decent farewell."