“because local stores could not customize in ways that varied with national averages”
Related...our son manages a good tire store. Small shop, but in a wealthy town and lots of repeat business. Professional people can get tires and car services done during weekdays. People don’t do a lot of car work on their weekends off.
Down in lower income places like East San Jose, the people cannot just take off to get work done during their own work hours, so they depend on weekends and later closing hours.
Corporate decided all 1,600 stores have to stay open until 7 pm and be open all day Sunday. It’s a one-size-fits-all rule, with no room for local exceptions. It’s a huge waste of money for our son’s operation. I was astonished at their lack of understanding of local markets.
Bingo — you described it exactly. The store I worked for sold lots of small wares and dry goods. We could have sold ten times the purple and maroon items because those are the team colors for the Baltimore Ravens and the DC team (formerly Redskins); but no, we only got what every other store in the chain got, across the country.
Many of these retail chains are in a consortium that manages multiple types of businesses under one holding company manned by MBAs with no actual experience of the type of work being done or the type of customer utilizing each type of business. They manage greeting card stores the same way as restaurants or drugstores, just sending out a clipboard of regulations every few weeks, keeping an eye on their personal stock portfolios at a vast remove from the places of work generating their high income. It’s as you say, a huge waste of money and a suppression of the working people making barely more than minimum wage to run these places with their hands tied behind their backs.
Musk’s recent reward to his working people was an excellent role model that needs to be widely imitated.