13 February 2026
If you’re ever in London, around, say, Knightsbridge or Covent Garden, strolling past the posh shops, pause and take a moment to observe how they present their offerings in their display windows.
Have a look at the way their merchandise is laid out: a single or a few, well-chosen items from their collection, thoughtfully displayed so you can fully appreciate their quality and value. Or, a window space crammed to bursting with everything they have to sell?
It’s more than likely the former.
The more elegant the shop, the less they will put on show. Why?
Confidence. In who they are, in what they are selling, in understanding their customers.
People looking in that window don’t frown and say to themselves: “Looks like they only have one handbag in stock and nothing else.” They think: That looks good, the shop looks good, I wonder what else they have.”
They are not aiming at people who want a bargain or trying to lure everybody in by stocking an unfathomable range of products, just in case someone is walking past who wants to buy a set of children’s plastic golf clubs and an ornamental, green, porcelain goldfish. Oh, and they might want a pair of oven gloves at the same time.
That is the Eddie’s Discount Store approach. Put everything in the shop window, because you don’t want to miss out on that big spender who might want 1,000 sets of plastic golf clubs, or porcelain goldfish or, indeed, oven gloves. Or, possibly 1,000 of all three.
Now the thing is there are quite a few people in marketing and business who think along these lines (although they honestly believe they don’t).
They have an ‘Eddie’s Discount Store’ mentality.
They are the ones who want to mention every product in the range, when you are writing about a new product launch. They are the ones who want to include a picture of their full product range to accompany the launch of a single, new product. They are the ones who ask you to water down the claims in your launch release, because it might make their existing products look bad. They are the ones who wonder why their competitors have better PR than them.
It's just so common and it’s totally driven by fear.
Fear of missing out on a sale because someone didn’t see it in your ‘window’. “If we include everything, they can’t miss it,” goes the thought process, such as it is.
The thing is, people don’t have massive attention spans, especially when there are so many things vying for their attention.
So, if you are lucky enough to get that attention, don’t waste it with superfluous nonsense about things they are not really interested in. The noise will just drown out the message you want to get over at this golden minute or two of people’s time you have earned.
If your message is wallpaper, lost in a mass of product names, they’re gone.
Focus on the one thing you want to talk about. The rest can wait for another day.
