Letter to Danier Leather

To the commenters on the 'Ouch that Hurt' post. Here it is and I am about to mail it.

Mr. Jeffrey Wortsman,
President and Chief Executive Officer
DANIER LEATHER INC
2650 St. Clair Avenue West
Toronto ON Canada
M6N 1M2

Dear Mr Wortsman,

On October 5th, 2007, I visited your Kanata Centrum store and was very unhappy with the experience. Here is a description of what happened:

I wanted to buy to buy my husband a wallet as a birthday gift. I have shopped in your stores before; in fact, I have purchased, over several years, four coats and have never been unhappy with the service. I am a white haired senior citizen and on that day I was dressed (as I mostly always dress) in tidy but inexpensive clothes. I entered your store and found four staff members behind the counter, one serving a customer, two working at something and the fourth acting as greeter. She greeted me but did not follow up. I asked for the location of the wallets and one of the workers raised her head and pointed. I went and chose a wallet and returned to the counter to pay for it. I saw two cash registers, one in use. I stood there and no one looked at me. I walked up to the counter. No one seemed to notice.

The door of the store opened and a woman came in. The greeter said hello, the woman made a remark about the scent of leather and the greeter asked her if this was her first time in this store. When she said yes, the greeter walked past me and my wallet and offered to show her around the store. The clerk at the cash register was taking a long time, arranging a payment of some sort. The other two clerks did not raise their eyes from their binders. I waited. I started off interested in how long it would take for someone to notice me. After, maybe, five minutes, no one had. At that point I was so angry that I was afraid to say anything lest I lose it completely. I put the wallet down on the counter, slowly, stepped back, slowly, and walked out of the store. No one noticed.

You are quoted in a news article as saying : "We are taking the necessary steps to return the Company to profitability and are employing strategies that focus on our key customers." Senior citizens are very likely to have available cash to spend. And in the near future the number of senior citizens is going to increase dramatically. You would, in my opinion, be wise to advise your staff that conservatively dressed seniors might be key customers.

Yours truly,