Barbara's Retail Industry Blog

81% of the consumers surveyed said they are using grocery store coupons, and 72% said they are using more coupons than they did six months ago, according to survey results released last week by customer acquisition company, Proactiv. This is hardly a statistical shocker. When the economy gets tough, consumers get couponing.

The survey results do emphasize how bold it was for southern California grocery chain Ralph’s to dramatically curtail its coupon doubling program this summer. Ralph’s announced in June that it would no longer double the face value of coupons worth over 50 cents. If you believe everything you read on grass roots websites and blogs, response to this policy change was more intense than the 5.4 earthquake that rumbled through southern California a few weeks later.

Despite letter-writing campaigns and general online harassment, Ralph’s has remained steadfast with their new policy. So, shoppers took their treasured paper discounts and their righteous indignation to rival chain Von’s in seemingly significant numbers. The glow of revenge didn’t last long, though. Very few weeks later Von’s betrayed their coupon doublers too when they announced they would scale back their own coupon program to match Ralph’s.

What’s a coupon addict to do?

Lose sleep at night apparently, if you believe what you read on grassroots websites and blogs. I’ve never been a “professional” couponer and the main reason is because I don’t buy 95% of the stuff that manufacturers issue coupons for. Since I don’t fill my shopping cart with General Mills cereals, Frito Lay snacks, and Proctor and Gamble cleaning product, I am admittedly unsympathetic to the grave distress that the southern California retail grocery pricing trend is apparently causing.

Tonight my neighborhood Ralph’s was plastered with bright yellow price tags pasted underneath the regular price tags. At least 80% of the products on the shelves had the yellow tags, which I discovered was the new “lower everyday price.” I was unimpressed by the pricing gimmick until I noticed the $1.00 difference between the white and yellow prices for my frozen soup vegetables. That got my attention, and I started noticing that the prices for the items on my grocery list were now 25-30% lower, and some prices were half of what they used to be.

Thinking I might have fallen prey to the markup-to-markdown scheme, I went online and calculated what my grocery bill would have been at nearby competitors. Surprisingly, my Ralph’s tab was 30-50% lower than it would have been at Albertson’s and exactly the same as it would have been at fellow coupon turncoat, Von’s. My conclusion is that I have been subsidizing other shoppers’ couponing addiction for a long time with the prices I’ve been paying for my unincentivized grocery store purchases.

For now I will be part of the silent minority who applaud the death of doubling, and hope that the trend catches on for the eventual good of the majority. Perhaps pricing gimmicks are on their way out and operational efficiencies that make price reductions possible are on the way in. A retail consumer can dream.

“Circumstances do not make the man, they reveal him.” – James Allen

Talbots announced yesterday that its second-quarter losses were $18.32 million, which is almost twice as much as it lost in the same quarter last year. CEO Trudy Sullivan cited “a difficult macro environment” as part of the reason why. The company plans to close 78 stores and reduce its cost structure by $100 million.

Ann Taylor’s same store sales were also down 14.3% in the second quarter of 2008. CEO Kay Krill said the sales results were good “despite the impacts of significant macroeconomic softness and a deteriorating consumer environment, both of which continue to weigh on the retail sector.” The company announced in January that it plans to close 117 stores.

Chico’s had $38.7 million in profits last year in its second quarter. This week it announced a $6.7 million profit for Q2 this year, which is a staggering 83% same-quarter drop. Scott A. Edmonds, chairman, president, and CEO said, "The retail environment continues to be challenging as customers remain increasingly cautious in their spending across the entire retail sector.”

“Adversity causes some men to break; others to break records.” – William Ward

Bucking all the retail industry trends, Urban Outfitters posted a 79% jump in second quarter profits, which included a 19% increase in sales, and a same store sales increase of 13%. After outperforming all its competitors and beating market estimates, CEO Glen Senk stated simply, "All of our brands and channels produced exceptional results during the period. The Company executed superbly throughout the quarter, and we believe we are appropriately positioned for the second half of the year."

Inventories grew by $25.6 million. Selling, general, and administrative costs fell. Merchandise markdowns decreased. Since the beginning of 2008 Urban Outfitters has opened 24 new stores and plans to open 21 more by the end of the year.

“Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it.” – Horace

Could we possibly be talking about the same quarter? The same retail sector? The same economy? The same gas prices? The same consumers with the same wallets? Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes. How could Urban Outfitters conjure such magical results from the same muck of circumstances that its competitors point to as the root of all their troubles?

When the economy itself is creating good results for retailers, every strategy is a good strategy because they all seemingly result in profits. Now that the economic supports have been kicked out from underneath the retail industry, it’s starting to become apparent which retailers can stand on their own good strategies without being propped up by external circumstances.

“Big is the enemy of cool.” – Richard Hayne, founder and chairman of Urban Outfitters

Don’t saturate the market. Instead of opening more stores, develop a new concept. It’s okay to fail. Never look in the rearview mirror. Give the stores a long leash. Be creative. No two stores should be the same. Know your customers and give them what they want. Look to efficiency improvements to boost profits.

These are the inside secrets that Urban Outfitters has revealed to the retail world over the last 38 years. But the simple philosophies and slow-moving strategies have been easy to ignore while more aggressive, high-flying retail operations were grabbing the headlines. Urban Outfitters' quiet success is screaming loudly now. And I think James Allen would agree that economic conditions do not make the character of a retail operation. They reveal it.

Any leader in any profession can benefit from knowing what it takes to coach a team to Olympic gold. Good preparation, good execution, and good luck. That’s what the CEO of USA Track & Field, Doug Logan, says it takes to create a good team performance. The validity of that formula might be questioned after the world watched both the men’s and women’s teams fail miserably in the 4 x 100 relay races last week. But the leadership validation we gained when the medals were awarded is no more valuable than the leadership lessons we learned when the baton was dropped.

Ultimately it is the individual athletes who drive themselves to their own victories, but what about the failures? When both the men’s and women’s US track relay teams took themselves out of medal contention by missing a baton pass, fingers were pointed immediately at “leadership.” Is it valid to credit the individuals for the victories and blame the coach for the failures?

Logan, as the top blamed leader in the track and field organization, responded almost immediately to the leadership accusations. “I have received emails from people across the country, particularly about the relays,” he wrote in his blog. “They all say more or less the same thing: the dropped batons were reflective of a lack of preparation, lack of professionalism, and of leadership. I agree. Dropping a baton isn't bad luck, it's bad execution.”

Accountability is an admirable quality in a leader, but isn’t the individual performer responsible for individual execution? According to Logan, “Responsibility for the relay debacle lies with many people and many groups, from administration to coaches to athletes. That's why, when these Games are completed, we will conduct a comprehensive review of all our programs… included in the assessment will be the way in which we select, train and coach our relays.” For any leader in any profession, this may be the best piece of leadership wisdom that Beijing had to offer.

When managers look for which employees to blame for poor service, poor sales, and generally poor performance, they are looking at the effect, not the cause. How did a low-performing employee get selected in the first place? What part of training is failing to adequately prepare employees to perform their tasks? What coaching improvements will create execution improvements? How is the system setting the team up for failure instead of setting it up for success?

These are the kind of questions that world-class leaders ask because these are the kind of questions that yield productive answers. When the questioning stops at “What went wrong and who did it?” the leader leaves both the individual and the team stranded in a state of defeat instead of leading them out of it.

It’s easy to look like a brilliant leader in moments of victory. It’s not so easy to be a brilliant leader in moments of defeat. You won’t win any medals for how you respond to the failures of your team, but it’s the actions of the leader in their own critical moments of truth that make everyone’s future success possible.

Mrs. Fields revealed that the cookie is crumbling when it announced its plans to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy last week. After suffering a $10.7 million loss last quarter, the privately-held purveyor for mall-shopping sweet teeth is seeking court protection while it decides what to do with its $200 million in accumulated debt.

If the executives at Mrs. Fields were to attend a support group of this year’s most prestigious retail companies in Chapter 11, they would be commiserating with their peers from Boscov’s, Mervyn’s, Shoe Pavilion, Linens ‘N Things, Sharper Image, Goody’s, Wickes, Lillian Vernon, and Dan River. Under any other circumstances, joining this club of well-known retail brands would be considered an honor. Unfortunately, though, the qualifications for 2008 membership are declining revenues, loss of market share, and crippling debt.

Companies that seek Chapter 11 protection are down, but they’re not yet ready to count themselves out of the retail game. Using history as a benchmark, independent long-term survival beyond Chapter 11 is not likely. But retailers like Federated Stores (Macy’s), Southland (7-11), and Winn Dixie, along with notables from other industries like Continental Airlines have proven that it’s not impossible. If Chapter 11 is a “reorganization” period, then life after Chapter 11 seems to be dependent upon how much of the organization is actually reorganized.

Most companies in Chapter 11 seem to focus on financial concerns. Since restructuring debt, though, doesn’t restructure the leadership, strategies, policies, and operational practices that created the debt, the organizations that continue to do the same things in the same ways after Chapter 11 don’t get better results, and soon find themselves on the brink of bankruptcy again.

Federated Stores fundamentally changed its merchandising and buying strategies, and the efficiencies allowed it to compete with discount apparel competitors. Winn Dixie fundamentally changed its IT and operating systems and the savings from its streamlined operations drove post-bankrutptcy sales and profits. Southland fundamentally changed its image with physical remodeling and a huge philosophical shift from “insult pricing” to “everyday fair pricing.” Continental fundamentally changed its policies and corporate culture to become an employee-driven customer-centric organization which now enjoys the highest customer loyalty in the airline industry.

Core changes at a fundamental level are the foundation upon which successful Chapter 11 survivors have built a new and improved version of themselves. They used their time in Chapter 11 as a meaningful and lasting reorganization period, and because of that, they still exist as a thriving business today.

So why don’t flailing companies use a pre-emptive “reorganization” strategy before bankruptcy becomes the unavoidable option? Oil magnate J. Paul Getty may have known the answer when he said, “In times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy.” Since reorganization requires those who created the current reality to question that reality, and more painfully, to question themselves, most choose to defend their current course until they’ve run out of road and the business is teetering on the brink of disaster.

If retail leaders want to learn from the Chapter 11 lessons of others, they can adopt a proactive periodic core reorganization strategy as a way to keep on a course of continuous improvement. If you wait until Chapter 11 forces you to reorganize, there may not be much more to your story.

“Retail Politics” is the term that describes the hand-shaking, baby-kissing strategy that politicians use to make a personal connection with voters and “buy” their loyalty. This political season Wal-Mart put a 20th century spin on the old-fashioned term when it brought politics onto its retail sales floor.

Reportedly, Wal-Mart store managers and department heads were forced to attend mandatory meetings where they were warned that a vote for Obama meant a vote for unionization. A vote for unionization, of course, was a vote for increased labor costs and fewer jobs. Vote for the democrats and risk losing your job? It seems like an unspoken mathematical deduction that Wal-Mart wanted its managers to make.

While Wal-Mart has denied they are attempting to tell their employees how to vote, it’s easy to see how the average Wal-Mart employee who was corralled into the involuntary political rally might have felt a little bit pressured. Certainly any undecided Wal-Mart voter now has a strong compelling reason to land on the McCain side of the fence. With all other things being equal, “because my employer says so” is a pretty strong influence.

The issue at stake is the Employee Free Choice Act, which is being labeled as the root of all retail industry evil by many retailers big and small. Just because you make it easier for employees to unionize, though, doesn’t automatically mean that they will want to. Nowhere in American labor history can I find an example of unions successfully organizing in a retail organization where employee satisfaction and company loyalty were high. Since Wal-Mart currently has more than 75 class action lawsuits in 41 states filed against it relating to wage and employee practice issues, though, it is obvious why giving unions easier access to its employees would be a cause for concern.

Wal-Mart’s senior officers are not the only ones setting up their tents in the Republican camp this election year. Public opinion pollster Zogby International has concluded that Wal-Mart shoppers are also buying what the McCain campaign is selling. By asking people to name both their favorite presidential candidate and their favorite retail store, it was discovered that a majority of loyal Wal-Mart shoppers were also loyal Republican voters.

Political-minded consumers might want to consider as they stroll around Wal-Mart, Sears, and Kohl’s that they are most likely rubbing elbows and bumping carts with shoppers who will be voting Republican this fall. Also according to Zogby, to shop Costco, Macy’s and Target is to shop where the Democrats roam. If the new “retail politics” involves using paycheck pressure to influence votes, then perhaps politically-minded consumers will exert their own political pressure by voting with their spending dollars for the retailers who share their own political opinions.

Along with religion, sports, medicine, science and ethics, perhaps “retailing” should be added to the list of things with which politics just doesn't mix.

The American dream is alive and well at Target. While companies like Coca Cola have spent billions to fabricate an image of Americana for themselves, Target authentically embodies the American dream in its new CEO, Gregg Steinhafel.

Retail employees everywhere can get inspired by the story of a man who graduated from college, got an entry-level merchandising job, worked his way through the ranks, and 29 years later assumed the top position of the company where he’s spent his entire career. It is the classic story of anything’s possible, hard work is rewarded, and persistence pays off. Steinhafel represents the essence of the American opportunity.

In his 29 years at Target, Steinhafel has held just about every position that has ever existed in a retail organization. He spent 15 years in merchandising roles, and it was 20 years before he was named president. Steinhafel’s predecessor, Bob Ulrich, also worked in the company for 20 years before taking the leadership reins. This is a definite demonstration of what Target values in its leadership team-- stability, loyalty, and a depth of understanding that comes only with experience

It seems that their slow and steady executive grooming strategy pays off well for both the corporation and the CEO. Target’s sales and store presence tripled under the Ulrich’s leadership, and its net earnings increased nearly nine-fold. More valuable than monetary earnings, Target was named by Fortune magazine this year as the 11th most admired company in America. That is a reputation that was not bought. It was earned.

Target has what it calls a “Community Responsibility” policy. Many retail organizations claim to have values that they believe will boost their image in the eyes of financial analysts, but Target actually backs up its claims in a tangible and measurable way. Target’s parent company, Dayton Hudson, has contributed 5% of its pretax profits to charitable and community organizations since 1946. Target has participated in this 5% giving practice since it was founded in 1962. Although Dayton Hudson doesn’t advertise the total amount of contributions they’ve made in their 62-year history of giving, since their donations will be about $150 million just this year, it’s safe to say the total calculation is mind-boggling. At a time when the retail industry is struggling, Target has not reallocated its charitable contributions in order to pad its bottom line.

Target, in a word, is grounded. It is rooted in its promise “to provide consistent growth plus a long-term plan to sustain our success.” If there are any short-term quarterly return strategies employed at the expense of the customer, they are imperceptible. Instead of living from quarter to quarter, Target is focusing on building for the future. It’s a shining example of what corporate American can be. Target is, in another word, inspiring.

The need for a quick bite on the road this week led me into a Taco Bell. While I was chewing the first bite of my utilitarian meal, an employee walking by asked me, “How is your food today?” I almost spewed beans out of my nose. This is a question I would expect to hear when partaking of the market price fresh Mediterranean catch of the day, not while ingesting an 89-cent burrito. I must have looked either dumbfounded or stupid as I nodded my head and made a food-obscured “Mmmmm” noise.

When I was ready to leave about 10 minutes later, this same Taco Bellman held the door open for me. What was up with this guy? I gave him an amused “Thank you!” and looked at him quizzically. The age… the starched shirt… the lack of nametag… of course! It was the franchise owner.

Who else would bother to talk to a $2.00 customer? Who else would exhibit genuine courtesy in an environment that doesn’t demand it? Who else would care? Only the actual owner who has a personal stake in the daily cash register receipts would exhibit this type of ownership behavior, right?

Last night as I entered a Ralph’s grocery store, I was almost mowed down by a Ralph’s grocery store employee in a full out sprint to the parking lot. I stopped to avoid the collision, and I turned to see what his big rush was. He yelled, “Ma’am!” to stop a woman so that he could hand her a bag with a dozen eggs inside. He said, “We forgot to give you your eggs!” (He gets extra points from me because he didn’t say, “You left your eggs,” or “They told me to give you your eggs.”) The delighted customer enthusiastically said, “Thank you!” and started fumbling for a tip. The bagger sprinter waved her off, and ran back into the store almost as fast as he had run out.

The Taco Bell owner surprised me, but the Ralph’s bagger stunned me. Honestly, what did it matter to him if he caught the eggless woman or not? Would there be a “little something extra” in his paycheck at the end of the week if he caught her? Would he get yelled at, put on probation, or fired if he didn’t? From my observation the energized bagger boy chose to run instead of walk, and he said “we” instead of “they” because he had that same sense of ownership that I had observed in the Taco Bell proprietor.

Ownership is a rare and elusive quality to find in the average employee because it can’t be externally motivated. A sense of ownership is internally born and personally bred. To those with a sense of ownership, demonstrating it is its own reward. Managers really can’t create ownership in people who don’t have the natural tendency for it, but they can cultivate ownership that is latent and they can support ownership that has been stifled by a controlling boss or work environment.

I was standing in the hallway of a large corporate office and noticed a jumbo poster on the wall declaring that “ownership” was one of the company’s corporate values. I walked into their customer service department and heard their reps talking on the phones with customers and saying things like, “The system messed up,” “They can’t get it out today,” and “I don’t have any control over it.” Building a team of employees with ownership is not impossible, but it’s going to take more than a poster to pull it off.

Retailers can’t control economic forecasts, but they can control their response to the voices of doom and gloom. While many look at today’s reality and get paralyzed, a few creative retailers are looking beyond today and getting mobilized.

• Food Lion announced this week that it is helping its customers identify IRS-approved health care products that can be purchased from their Health Savings Account or Flexible Spending Accounts. I have one of those health accounts, and I have never yet used those pre-tax dollars on anything because I don’t know what’s “legal.” I just wish I had a Food Lion close to me now. Perhaps they can take over my neighborhood Albertsons that is closing down at the end of August. Perhaps my Albertsons wouldn’t be closing down if they had proactive strategies like Food Lion.

• Macy’s has mini FAO Schwartz’s. Stop & Shop has Starbucks juniors. J.C. Penny has Sephora boutiques. Little stores inside big boxes is a way that retailers are partnering for profits. I’ve always been an advocate of the “don’t compete, create” philosophy and these creative partnerships are great examples of it. How about a washeterita inside an AMC theater? I love escaping to the movies, but I would love it even more if I knew someone was folding my underwear while I was eating my $10 popcorn.

• This month Target started offering next day installation of consumer electronics products like high def TVs purchased from its website. With this quick and easy service, Target hopes to not only boost sales, but also decrease returns. Good idea! I still can’t get TV sound through my entertainment system speakers, and my DVD-R still doesn’t “R.” I have returned more CE products than any other category because I’m always convinced that it’s the machine’s fault, not mine, when I can’t get it to work right. Perhaps it was my return receipts that helped inspire this Target offer.

• Kroger has gone mobile with its coupons in Atlanta. Through a wireless system that I don’t fully comprehend, shoppers can select coupons from their cellphone which will then be loaded to their savings card and automatically applied at checkout. To participate in this, I would need to charge my cellphone and figure out how the picture screen thingy works. Luckily for Kroger I am not in the target age group for this innovation. It does seem like a great way to reel in those youngsters, though, who barely know what a newspaper is and would rather eat dirt than clip coupons.

Fresh strategies can lift the energy of a retail operation and lift the spirits of those shopping there. Today's retail industry is what it is, but tomorrow is what creative retailers will make it to be.

Low-carb equals lower weight, lower weight equals better health, therefore low-carb equals better health. So the logic goes for the fattest country on the planet. My favorite example of low-carb insanity was a bag of pork rinds that had prominent placement on the special “low carb/diet” section of my grocery store. While it is true that the deep-fried skin of a pig has little or no carbohydrate content, I have never seen pork rinds on anybody’s healthy eating food chart. But the low-carb myth was one that food retailers were willing to participate in and perpetuate as long as the low-carb train was headed to Profitville.

“Green” is now the new low-carb. Green is good for the planet, consumers are happy to help the planet, therefore consumers should be happy with anything labeled by a retailer as “green.” And so the exploitation of the newest craze begins. But just because something looks green and sounds green, doesn’t mean that the retailer bragging about it is green-motivated at all.

Plastic bags are a hot green retailing topic. Personally I will be glad when stores – particularly grocery stores - stop using plastic bags. I have always found them to be the most flimsy, inefficient, customer-unfriendly method for toting merchandise – particularly groceries – available to mankind. So, yes, it is good that plastic bags are leaving both the retail scene and the environment.

Here’s my question… Who decided plastic bags were a good idea in the first place? Retailers who were completely unconcerned about the environment made plastic bags the standard because they were much more concerned about their bottom line. So, please excuse me if I hold my applause for the elimination of a retailing practice that was started by ecologically irresponsible retailers in the first place.

Whole Foods set the green standard for bagging long ago. They have encouraged the recycling and reuse of bags for as long as I have been shopping there, and they have been paying back the customers who bring their own bags for years. They didn’t start their reuse-recycle practices because it was the hip green trend of the day, but because one of their core values is to “care about our communities and the environment.”

From a consumer point of view, the Whole Foods standard is much different than the ride-the-green-train retailers who are charging customers for bags – like IKEA and Marks & Spencer – or using the green movement as an excuse to sell expensive logo-plastered tote bags like Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s.

Last week, the city of Los Angeles joined the city of San Francisco by passing a law that will ban the use of plastic bags in retail stores by 2010. It’s interesting that the plastic bag bans are starting to come from the government. The implication is that retailers will not make the change themselves unless forced to. And yet, as they make the government-mandated move away from plastic, it will be interesting to watch retailers proudly declare themselves “green.” Mandated compliance is a celery-tinted move at best, and doesn’t really deserve full-blown green respect.

Green retailing is a positive thing. And if the only way the planet can get green is through government coercion or fad exploitation, then so be it. The retail industry should be concerned, however, with how long the public will be fooled by those retailers who are passing out green-colored glasses with one hand and reaching into shoppers’ wallets with the other hand to finance their own green image. Not long enough, I predict. Because already “retailers who care about something besides money” is starting to be the new “green.”

The latest retail CEO to bail out of the boardroom on a golden parachute is Charming Shoppes’ Dorritt J. Bern. After announcing Charming’s strategy to eliminate 150 corporate and field management positions, cut 200 full-time home operations positions, and close 150 stores earlier this year, Bern just announced her own elimination this week. Shortly afterwards, the media announced the $5-6 million she will be paid to leave. Bern should have used a better contract negotiator. Six million in CEO-dollars is more like a yellowed bed sheet than a golden parachute. I wonder how much the hundreds of other ousted employees got paid to get fired.

One of Charming’s chains is Petite Sophisticate. I used to be a loyal Petite Sophisticate customer until the styles got irrelevant, the fabrics got cheap, and the sales people got pushy. I guess in a way Bern is being held accountable for that and whatever else has caused Charming’s stock to plunge. But her $6 million punishment is kind of like being grounded and confined to your bedroom with nothing but your plasma TV, iPhone, high speed internet, and PS2 to entertain you.

It would have been fun to listen in when the first CEO convinced a board of directors that being at the top of the corporate ladder is akin to the being at the top of the professional sports ranks. That was a masterful sales job. I would be willing to bet it was a sports agent turned corporate contract negotiator who pulled it off the first time. The notion that a company should pay a CEO vast sums for getting fired because the firing might have a detrimental effect on the CEO’s future earnings is quite a notion indeed!

Admittedly, the half life of a retail CEO seems to be getting shorter. Some of this year’s more notable short-timers include these high profile CEO’s:

• Daryl Brewster led Krispy Kreme’s stock price from about $9.00 to around $3.00 in just two years. He received $2.8 million for that 2-year accomplishment when he resigned in January for “personal reasons.” I should hope that a 66% decline would be “personal.”

• Paul Harrington resigned in March, 2008 after just 2 years as the head of slumping sales for Reebok. He took his good-bye bonus to CA to “pursue new career and business opportunities there.”

• Woolworths was much less kind when they booted Trevor Bish Jones out of his corner office. Not only did he get a pitiful one-year salary severance, he didn’t even get to pretend that his departure was in the pursuit of some greater happiness. Woolworths’ press release bluntly announced, “It has been agreed between the Board and Trevor that this is an appropriate time to seek new leadership for the business.” Ouch, Trevor. You might want to think about hopping over the pond where we hold our ousted corporate failures in greater esteem.

• Also this week, John Poon resigned as Esprit Holdings’ deputy chairman and CFO, claiming he had no disagreement with the board. While it’s nice to believe that Poon skipped happily out the doors towards “his intended pursuit of other interests,” I have to believe that the board had at least a little bit of disagreement with the 27% drop in share prices this year.

When I was walking through the mall tonight I wondered which of the part-time retail employees might follow their retail career path all the way to that rock star CEO status or how many of them even wanted to try. It’s all glitter and glamour if you don’t mind the risk of public failure and professional humiliation. A good sports agent is a must.