Author: Chris Moore
  • Video
  • 5 minutes

Chris Moore on the opportunity in the wrong place, wrong time

Updated Thursday, 3rd March 2011
"There were markets we'd gone into too early, too soon"

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Chris Moore

Difficult to think really, I mean I think we, when I first started I was working with Domino’s International in setting up the marketing systems around Europe.  And I think there were definitely markets there that we’d gone into too early, and in particularly Italy, we’d opened up a store in Italy which happened to be just opposite a US military base so that was 99% of the sales.  But we had to withdraw from that market, obviously with the cold war melting, then obviously that the customer base basically just went back to the US.  So that was going into a market too early, too soon, without making any real attempt of understanding what the Italian population might have thought about our pizzas, and it actually cost the business quite a lot of money. So this is prior to Domino’s Pizza in the UK and Ireland, this is when I was working for Domino’s Pizza International in the early years, but a good example of getting it wrong. 

Now, over time it may be worth considering going back into some of these markets that we sort of left, leaving with our tail between our legs, because of course the brand is now so much more known.  20 years ago it was virtually unknown beyond the US.  Actually a very good example was in 2009, the beginning of 2009, and we saw that our same store sales were looking a lot more pedestrian than they usually are and we decided that we would look at different promotions, and one of those was - it was actually a decision which was made in the heat of the moment, all the franchisees decided to go with it, and we launched it nationally, and that was the Two for Tuesday campaign which is still live today.  So out of a situation where we were kind of snookered and we were actually didn’t know what it was that we were, you know, how we were actually going to get out of that particular situation, I think it goes back to the agility of the system, the fact that you’ve got a few franchisees and not hundreds of franchisees to help you make those decisions, and out of that lemon came the lemonade as it were, and that really changed sales for the rest of that year and beyond, which is why it’s still part of our promotional calendar.

(2’27”)

 

Have you been in the wrong place at the wrong time - and has it given you good opportunity?

 

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