Bernardo Trujillo's Best Quotes

Bernardo Trujillo is one of the most important trailblazer of the retailing business. He was a sales representatives of the NCR, trying to sell the (at the time) high tech cash restiring machines. Because he wanted to sell those new tools, he was setting up seminars in Daytona (Ohio) where he was explaining his vision of modern commerce: self service, large hypermarts, low prices, the importance of cars. They were cold the MMM seminars (Modern Merchandizing Methods).

Bernardo Trujillo was joined in his conferences by some of the most infamous entrepreneurs of the time in the retail business. Founders of now global retailers such as Carrefour, Fnac, Auchan, or Darty went to these seminar prior to launch their businesses.

A great article (in French) describes his whole life and philosophy. Actually, it seems there is more information in French available than English. 

Here are some of his most famous quotes, that changed the world of both retailing, and most importantly, of the society:

• No Parking, No business: With the raise of the car's hedge, you better have a big enough parking to drain large crowd to your stores.
• Billboards are the best sellers: you pay them once and take no vacations
• Success is based on three items: self service, discounts, and advertizing. If one misses, everything collapse.
• Poor people needs low prices. Rich people loves them.
• Create an island of loss in an ocean of profits. This is the concept of discounting and promotions to create traffic
• The show is the customers. The set it the products: What drives customer traffic is the fact there is a large crowd of customers.
• It is where traffic is that you can do commerce: location is key to one retail success
• Pile up and sales low: Two of the corner stones of commerce: theatrilazation and discount.