Mama's got a brand-new BAG

This photo, unfortunately, is NOT of my laundry room. This is the beautiful, functional laundry room in the new Millionaire's Lottery Prize home on Marine Drive in White Rock. I very seldom long to live in a nicer place than I do now...but this place was pretty spectacular! Hopefully, I'll be moving in at the end of January...HA!

This photo, or more specifically, the whole house got me thinking about the resources, and the waste generated by a house of that size. I came across a really interesting article in USA Today(Monday Nov 29th) that spoke about how quickly things change in this globalized world. As Retailers, it's more important than ever to try to look as far forward as possible, in order to not be blindsided by issues that can affect your business.

The article was titled: Mama's Got a brand-new bag, and the tag line was: Her dad patented the plastic grocery bag; she designed a way to do without it.It was written by Wendy Koch. Basically the article explains how Kristen Brown's father patented this fabulous new thing...the plastic shopping bag in 1967...and how a mere 40 years later, that same bag has gone from revolutionary, to being completely banned in many counties and states all over America. To add insult to injury, Kristen Brown has invented a re-usible 4 bag system that allows grocery shoppers to never have to touch a plastic shopping bag again!

Think about that for a minute. What could something like this, such as your town banning plastic bags, do to your business? If you are a large grocery store or a Retailer who has 50,000 plastic shopping bags in stock in their back room, because they use 50 per day, every day...it could be devestating. I think that small Retailers are prone to living in their stores, not paying a lot of attention to world events. This story is a great example of seeing a future trend, or something coming that may or may not affect your business in a negative way...BEFORE it happens. Keeping up on events in your community, or in the large city next to your community, or even in the large COUNTRY near your Community is a good first step in identifying threats AND opportunities. Kristen Brown is taking the success of her father, and making it her own.

Do you know what threats OR opportunities are out there for your business?