How We Sell

New York City's Chelsea neighborhood, wedged between Greenwich Village and midtown, is a square-mile shrine to cusp-of-the-millennium mainstream retailing. Barnes & Noble, Victoria's Secret, and Restoration Hardware (see inset photographs) have all established big, boisterously appointed outposts amid turn-of-the-century office buildings. The Body Shop, J. Crew, Banana Republic, and the Gap have also arrived. abc Carpet & Home, a rug shop-turned-home-furnishings megaboutique, has become a consumer destination unto itself.

Two floors above Chelsea's mercantilist fray, tucked into a former hotel, you will find the headquarters of Envirosell Inc., home to managing director Paco Underhill and 25 of his colleagues, who are perhaps the world's savviest students of the art and science of America's favorite indoor sport -- shopping. Its offices are, to be generous, utilitarian: white walls, plain windows, and a hodgepodge of oak-laminate cubicles situated beneath bulky air-conditioning ducts. From the looks of things, this is a company of the retailing business, but clearly not in the retailing business.

The single distinguishing feature of Envirosell's two floors, in fact, is the collection of videotapes. There are thousands of them: Some rest on shelves that rise from floor to ceiling, some are piled into plastic tubs, and others are simply stacked on top of one another. Each is carefully labeled: "Chicago/White Hen, Gatorade/July-94"; "Costa Mesa/Pepsi Drive-Thru/11-6-98"; "Deerfield/Blockbuster/ 12-9-95" -- city/store/date, videotape after videotape.

"This," says Paco Underhill slyly, pointing to the massive collection of tapes, "is my retirement annuity." He's not kidding. Outside of Hollywood, this could well be the most valuable film library in the nation. The tapes are meticulous diaries of retailing sociology and, if you will, markers of cultural history. They tell us a bit about who we are, and they show us a lot about how we shop.

Underhill, 47, founded Envirosell in 1978, a few years after hearing urban anthropologist William H. Whyte Jr. speak on the subject of the mechanics of city planning. It was an epiphany for Underhill, who soon realized he could apply Whyte's tools to the retail world. Equipped with a movie camera and a notebook, he could record how many steps shoppers took past a store entrance before pausing, which direction they turned, and where their eyes came to rest. He could track how often parents reached for a certain brand of cereal, with which hand, where the box was located on the shelves at the store, and whether their children's protests changed the parents' decision.

This is what Envirosell does -- in malls, in restaurants, and at kiosks around the world. Underhill's researchers patrol stores at the behest of Samsonite, Hewlett-Packard, Denny's, Toro -- and dozens more merchants, retailers, ad agencies, and financial-services institutions, not to mention the U.S. Postal Service. For each assignment, Envirosell researchers position video cameras at crucial points -- at the store's entrance, say, or near the cash registers -- and then they discreetly cruise the aisles, mapping the routes of shoppers and taking notes on their behavior.

After returning to the offices in Chelsea, the researchers spend hours poring over the videos in fast-forward mode, studying shoppers as they zip past displays and through checkout lines. Every so often, they spot something: an abrupt turn past a table stocked with products, perhaps; an overly long pause in an aisle; or an awkward reach for an item that's been stocked on the bottom shelf -- some small gesture. At this point, they slow the tape, watch it again, and jot a note. They have captured an insight.

During more than 20 years and thousands of tapes, Underhill and his crew have turned up some interesting insights: First, shoppers almost always drift to the right; they walk to the right and look toward the right, which is why merchandisers position new products just to the right of known top sellers. Second, people don't read more than three or four words of a sign in a shop window. Third, shoppers walk past banks quickly. Fourth, mirrors remind shoppers that they are being watched. And fifth, if you put chairs in a women's clothing store, men will sit and women will shop longer.

These are not opinions; they are facts. And if you are a retailer or a consumer-products marketer, they are incredibly valuable facts. But they are also significant observations about business, work, and the act of finding -- or being -- a customer. That is why Underhill's new book, "Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping" (Simon & Schuster, 1999), entered its ninth printing in August. His book is a remarkable business tool, a distillation of all those notes and tapes, packaged in a way that is useful, witty, and loving.