Book Release: The Five Laws of Retail

authenticity, Bilbo Baggins, business values, community, Dante Aligieri, honesty, Retail, retail success, the five laws of retail, Woody Allen

George

Blog, The Five Laws of Retail

17 Jun 2019

My book, The Five Laws of Retail, released June 18, 2019. Presales on both Amazon and Barnes & Noble have been very encouraging.

Bringing this book to market has been a marathon and not a sprint. I’ve faced some challenges and learned many things about publishing a book during this journey, but one thing has remained constant: the three main reasons I wrote it in the first place.

Why I Wrote The Five Laws of Retail

First, everyone should know this stuff. A deep understanding and internalizing of these five principals will help you to do your job better. By implementing the lessons you’ll find in this book, you’ll avoid mistakes and be successful at whatever you are doing.

Second, it’s kind of a memoir. When you’ve worked at something like retail for different companies over a long period of time, you just have tons of stories to tell. I’ve woven small, often silly, and definitely heartfelt, touching stories and anecdotes throughout the book.

At some point, I came to understand that events and the stories that result had a pattern. They fell into certain “buckets,” and I describe those buckets as laws.

Third, I believe it is a fun and easy read. I have a shelf full of business books I have never completely read; I bet you do, too. They are just dull as hell or stupid overall. Plus they don’t have any pictures.

The Five Laws of Retail has pictures and graphs throughout. In my experience, most retailers have some form of ADD and could never get through most of the books on the subject. The Five Laws is, I hope, full of not only solid advice, but also interesting and unique content—a book you want more of with every turn of the page. Quotations are drawn from a very diverse crowd: from Woody Allen to Dante Aligieri and Bilbo Baggins, you’ll learn that all of us are retailers of one type or another!

Where the Laws Originated … and Why They Matter

I did not create the Five Laws of Retail. No. I discovered them. Then as I did the historical research—which actually was a lot of fun, and I discovered that things that happened in history, like the Boston Tea Party and the rise and fall of the de’ Medici family, followed the same Five Laws. Most important, I learned (as you will) that the Five Laws apply pretty much universally.

My next book is tentatively titled Business Values for the 21^st Century . . . and actually, the title will probably change. What I am getting at here is that there has been a shift in the values that are most important in business in this new century compared to the last or even the past two centuries. Things change and evolve over time, and that includes values. Today, the most important values now are: