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Written by Marcelo Russo
on May 04, 2020

For centuries, the majority of the industries have been family owned, the owner was face-to-face with their customer, and most importantly they were local to each other.

Then, the industrial revolution happened, those family-owned businesses began to transform to corporations, the familiarity of the owner/client relationship began to disappear (morphing into representative/client) and most importantly, the local boundaries disappeared, businesses began to experience the global market.

 

These big corporations are now the behemoths of almost every market segment. 

They may rule the big economy, but guess what... the mom & pop store, they are resilient, they are smart, and are the lifeblood of the regional economies.

But how can they survive and even compete against the behemoths?

 

Enter the ExO transformation.

When we think of an EXO business we think explicitly something that lives on the Internet that allows us to work with different solutions and leverage all the assets that and EXO business SCALE and IDEAS acronyms that we have and create solutions that go above and beyond what a normal business would do.

Brick-and-mortar businesses are uniquely equipped to be nimble and pivot easily. Even though they may have fewer cash reserves, they are the prime candidates for an ExO Transformation.

 

Let's imagine an automotive company, a dealership. They would be a great example of a standard business model. They are extremely tied to closing live sales (walk-ins), they would leverage paid marketing (on radio/tv/street) and the stock of cars would be only in their lot (standard inventory management).

 

Now if we add a couple of ExO traits:

  • We could create a local Marketplace with their local community. This would reduce the costs of marketing and increase market penetration.
  • Further exploration of the marketplace, would be to create a virtual lot in each person's garage.
    • Not everybody is ready to do a proper sale. So your current salesmen could join virtually using something as simple as a Hangout or Zoom.

 

Now these ideas are not new, but we can push further on them:

  • AR and VR could create a complete sales experience. Imagine seeing the car you want in your garage. Customizing every detail in front of you.
    • Plus the company could begin hiring a more experienced sales team if they don't need to be from the area.
  • With a solid marketplace in place, people could move their cars to better locations (other peoples garage in more central locations)
    • The company could track with an online dashboard in which zones perform better and provide incentives.
    • The community would interact with each other to rate best places, best attention and the same place would be used to provide the company with a direct line to their customers.

 

How much time do you think the brick-and-mortar business still has if they don't implement some of the changes I mention? Believe me, it's not a question, we are in the midst of the 4th industrial revolution, and the time is now!. 

 

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