By Adam Blair, Executive Editor
Recently I was lucky enough to see a beautiful revival of the 1963 musical She Loves Me, presented by the Roundabout Theatre Company. If you’re in or coming to New York, try to see it. It’s as if the adjective “charming” was invented just to describe this show. Though it’s not as well-known as their smash hit Fiddler on the Roof (also currently in revival), it’s by the same writers, Jerry Bock (music) and Sheldon Harnick (lyrics).
And there is a retail connection: She Loves Me is one of the few musicals I know that really shows, in scene, song and dance, what it’s like to work in a retail store, and what it takes to succeed there. Don’t be fooled by the fact that it’s set in a parfumerie (a kind of proto-Sephora) in 1934 Budapest: the products and the technology may change, but some things about retail never do.
Here’s what I learned about success in retail from She Loves Me:
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• Pay Attention To Every Customer: One of the show’s first big numbers is “Sounds While Selling:” Three clerks help three female customers find the precise beauty products they need. We hear snatches of each clerk’s sales pitch, contrasted to comedic effect, and each clerk is careful to provide their departing customer with his business card. The personal touch never goes out of style, particularly when selling highly personal merchandise.
• Find The Right Products For Each Customer: The musical’s heroine, Amalia, “auditioning” for a job at the shop, recasts a musical cigarette box as a “functional” candy box in her attempt to sell it to a somewhat pudgy customer. The annoying tune that’s played each time the lid is raised becomes a dietary reminder not to overindulge in sweets. (This is what people did before Fitbit came on the scene.) Her audition is successful, setting the show’s plot in motion.
• Don’t Let The Holiday Frenzy Freak You Out: She Loves Me climaxes with the number “Twelve Days to Christmas,” which hilariously shows the escalating hysteria as Christmas Eve inexorably approaches. The carefully choreographed chaos is accelerated with each verse (Nine days to Christmas, four days to Christmas, ONE DAY to Christmas) as once-polite shoppers elbow each other aside to grab the last precious package. Yet the clerks all pull together to make it a successful season.
There are some darker lessons too: these are real people with real problems underneath the sugar-coating. There’s a pointed illustration that the tone of a workplace is largely set by the attitudes of those at the top. When the shop’s owner, Mr. Maraczek, learns that his wife is having an affair with one of his clerks, a pleasant place to work became an uncomfortable hell for everybody. (It turns out to be a case of mistaken identity, good news for the show’s hero Georg, who Maraczek suspects of the infidelity.)
You’re likely to enjoy this show no matter who you are, but retailers can get a bit more out of it than the rest of the theater-going public. Visit She Loves Me to learn what to do — and what not to do — to make your store a happy, profitable place to work and shop in.
