A few days ago I was talking with a former retail colleague about the industry and she issued an interesting challenge from another friend. This friend was baffled by one of her favorite retailers.

This retailer, who shall remain nameless in this piece, offers a broad assortment of turtlenecks – in all colors and sizes in its stores. The friend quite likes them, knows their fit, and really wanted to buy a selection of colors online. Sadly for her, the online offering was narrower, and she couldn’t just order the ones she wanted. She was “required ” to visit one of their stores. The exact question I was asked was “Why is the online selection of relaxed turtlenecks online so small? Isn’t it cheaper to fill an online order? “

I said, “Likely they’ve decided they don’t want to keep extra inventory dedicated in their distribution centers. They feel it’s more efficient to send people to the stores and they don’t have the technology to fulfill from stores efficiently at all. “

Well kids, this is a really unfortunate answer and bad decision-making on the part of the retailer. Even though we found in this year’s omni-channel retail benchmark that in aggregate cross-channel shoppers are no more profitable than single channel shoppers, apparel was the big outlier. Thirty-six percent report their multi-channel shoppers are significantly more profitable. And here’s a lady just waiting for them to pull the trigger. Who knows how many colors she’d have of those turtlenecks if the company could do it for her?

I mean, we’ve all been there, right? And sometimes, we simply give up on the retailer. For me it wasn’t apparel, it was pet food. I have three cats. They’re fussy eaters. They like 3 flavors of Fancy Feast cat food. Because there are three of them, I buy by the case. I spent months (not exaggerating) to find a way to get the local pet supply superstore to keep them in stock for me. I finally gave up and now get them from… yup… Amazon.com. Now, I could go through a very long explanation why I wish I didn’t have to do this (it has to do with packaging and damage to cans, but I won’t bore you). The point is, if this retailer had found a way to get this product into their stores (in my case), I would have been happy to buy there. If they’d done “endless aisle ” and shipped to my house, I would have been good with that too. In fact, I used my “clout ” to ask their VP of distribution to help me out. I didn’t get helped.

Instead, I never go there anymore.

So far, the apparel retailer hasn’t lost the shopper. For now, it has something she wants, and she’ll get it from the stores, just not as often, or as many. The pet supply retailer really did lose me.

This omni-channel thing (or whatever you want to call it) is real, and is table stakes at worst, and a profit driver at best. In more official sounding terms, it’s a retailer imperative.

Ask yourself, where you are on the omni-channel maturity curve? Can you do it at all? Honestly, even if you have to “brute your way through ” you’re better off than just saying “We can’t do it. ” Those are the new rules.