Maintaining Brand in a Recession:

How Your Talent Distinguishes the Customers' Experience

February 24, 2009

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The foundation of EMS’s success story is finding the strength in their unique brand. Each company invents their own brand. By understanding the examples Colleen Clark shared, any organization can apply the underlying principles to strengthen their brand based on people, not money, and make a measurable difference one person at a time.

Although retail is a very competitive industry, even smaller retailers can use their size as an asset. Smaller organizations can’t do everything, so the “travel with essentials” principle became EMS’ asset; they focus only on what matters most to their customers, while reducing cost on everything else about how they deliver their business. How did EMS get their people to embrace a new strategy that both strengthened brand and cost less than the way they used to do business? Strengthened by their comfort with forging into the great unknown outdoors, EMS committed to apply this confidence to revising their business and talent practices.

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