Last week I spent a long weekend in St Croix, USVI. I have a small condo there, and generally love it. While I love my space, the island has had some tough times these past few years. Hovensa, located on the island, and the largest gas-producing refinery in the Western Hemisphere shut down because, ironically, the rising cost of oil made it cost-prohibitive to ship the crude oil in on boats and then ship the finished product to its final destination. As the island’s biggest employer, that created some serious ripples in the economy. And of course, when there are ripples in the economy, the first sector to feel the impact is…retail.

Normally when I go to St Croix, I take care of minor maintenance on the condo, and that requires a trip to various retailers around the island. Last weekend was no exception. What I found troubled me. Much like in the US during the great recession of 2009-2010, I was reminded of what I call “The Tyranny of Turn. ” This tyranny exists because as a general rule, buyers’ turn objectives are set at a departmental or category level. So when sales for the category fall, the buyers’ budgets (open to buy) fall at the same rate. And one of the metrics driving buyer compensation is…turn! So it’s clearly in the buyers’ best interest to meet their turn objectives.

But here’s the rub. The “good stuff ” is likely still selling, while the mediocre stuff is languishing. In normal times, the buyer has enough budget to replenish the good stuff while the mediocre stuff gradually sells off, either because the price gets lower or because if you wait long enough, most things do sell. But in bad times, like we’re seeing in St Croix now, there’s no budget to buy the good stuff. So we’re left with the wrong stuff, frustrated customers, and a self-fulfilling prophecy of even lower sales than we might’ve had under different circumstances.

A small example: The robe rack in my bathroom broke. All the walls are pure concrete, so I’d much prefer to buy a replacement that’s the same size as the old one. No drilling, no sanding and little to no repainting. I went to two local stores. I’m not going to name them. One had NO robe hooks anymore, just a lot of other bathroom accessories that I didn’t want or need. The other was even more frustrating. I saw exactly the one I wanted hanging as a wall sample. Unfortunately, there was nothing else BUT the wall sample. No stock anywhere, just lots of other kinds of robe hooks that I didn’t want. I bought one, but didn’t have the heart to start the party rolling. It sits on the counter while I troll the internet looking for what I want back home in Miami.

There are other examples, but you get my point. While I had a wonderful weekend, my shopping experience was not so much.

What’s the solution? I think we have to get far more granular in setting our Open to Buy and turn objectives. We have to reward the behaviors that maximize not just turn, but sales and service levels. And what concerns me most is that many of us think we’re there already. I’m trolling through early responses to our 2013 Merchandising benchmark survey, and 80% of us believe we have a solid understanding of forecasting, while 71% believe we have a solid understanding of integrated merchandise planning, allocation and replenishment. Similarly 96% of respondents believe that an optimized end-to-end merchandising lifecycle is at least somewhat important to our retailing success.

Until we narrow our targets, and acknowledge that not all merchandise in a category moves at the same rate of speed, we’re never going to succeed in satisfying the customer. And this is more critical now than ever. You know why, right? You know exactly what activity I started engaging in when I got home. I started trolling the web for those items that I couldn’t find on island. In some cases, I was able to purchase what I wanted from the same retailers, in other cases, I went to the go-to places – Amazon and eBay. That’s not good.

For the past couple of years, retailers have enjoyed decent results, at least in the US. The horror of 2009-2010 seems behind us. But how quickly we forget what can happen when the worm turns.

We’ll continue looking at the results of our benchmark survey, and I’m using the lack of inventory on island as a great excuse for a quick late-summer long weekend with items I pick up on the mainland. But it’s really important to remember that as the sales tide starts to recede, the shoals of our misplaced forecasts start popping up above the waterline. It’s imperative that we get more granular, more responsive, and more specific. The customer just has way too many choices for us to do anything else.