Walmart's bid (with Microsoft) to buy TikTok, the video-sharing social networking service, is a way for the juggernaut to continue to compete with Amazon. A few short years ago Walmart lagged behind in the digital space and was constantly outpaced by the innovation at Amazon in e-commerce, logistics and last-mile delivery. But much has changed in the last three years. When Walmart bought Jet.com in 2016, the goals for its e-commerce business were to consolidate leadership under Marc Lore, to shorten the learning curve for understanding the …
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Don’t Be Fooled by Virtual Sizing Apps
Sizing and fit are top concerns for consumers shopping apparel. According to Shapeometry, in 2019 the apparel returns related to fit hit $60 billion, half of which were returns of online purchases. About 85 percent of apparel returns were due to fit issues. So, the premise of a digital personal avatar sounds great for shoppers, but the reality is that the supply chain cannot deliver to specific avatar sizes. Instead, brands match a personal avatar size to the closest size in the existing product range. Jason Wang, COO of Alvanon explains, …
Brand Betrayal
The pandemic, in combination with the demand for racial justice, has brought out the best and the worst of the retail and fashion industries, forcing us to examine more closely the brands we give our money to. Free Pass Most of the fashion industry has, for too long, been unable to uproot itself from its deeply embedded history of racial and class biases. Suddenly, though, voices demanding change have grown louder and the industry’s day of reckoning is finally upon us. Over the past few months, as the Black Lives Matter movement swept (and …
Pandemic Planning Is No Panacea
Business continuity planning alone is not enough to survive a global pandemic. There is no amount of planning that could have prepared retailers for what has transpired over the past several months. This is especially true for retailers and brands which distribute exclusively in the U.S. where a significant percentage of revenue was abruptly cut off when stores closed. The coronavirus enveloped the country in one quick, fell swoop, especially disrupting retailers which began the year on a strong footing, building on solid performances from …
Hyper-Personalized & Preemptive Commerce
Five key trends for 2020 include Preemptive Distribution, Mobile Proliferation, Price and Product Personalization, Retailer Collaborations with Technology Companies and Associate Empowerment & Virtual Assistance. 1. Preemptive Distribution A key trend in the retail landscape, which is finally coming to fruition in a major way for 2020, is preemptive distribution. Retailers that outpace and outperform their peers exercise the 3P Distribution Model, delivering consistent value to their target market. This distribution model starts with …
Buy Now, Wear Now, Pay Later!
Layaway as we know it has changed considerably over time, and it seems antiquated when today's millennials are looking for higher levels of instant gratification than consumers of the past. As such, there has been a rise in the buy-now, wear-now, pay-later tech-enabled business model where shoppers can take home their purchases immediately, while paying in instalments. In the past, retailers would have the burden of storing layaway inventory until the customer had the funds to pay it off. Once the item was completely paid for, the customer …
Why LVMH Grows Year After Year
Ever since Michael Kors’ Capri Holdings announced the acquisition of Italian-luxury brand Versace, comparisons with 164-year old international fashion powerhouse LVMH have run rampant. My colleague Pam Danziger and I have been baffled because in our minds, we see both companies competing in different stages of the business cycle as LVMH has been in stability mode for many years while Capri Holdings is in the growth stage. By our own standards, these two companies are simply incomparable. Capri Holdings is a relatively new concept with three …
Why Zara Wins, H&M Loses in Fast Fashion
Fast fashion is the darling of the fashion retail today. Whereas women’s clothing store sales have declined 2.7 percent from 2016-2017 in the U.S., a recent report from Hitwise shows the fast fashion market has grown has grown 21 percent worldwide over the past three years. Two brands are the leaders in the fast fashion market: H&M and Zara, an Inditex brand. Given that both are international brands, it’s hard to draw line-by-line comparisons for the U.S. market. But here is what you need to know. Zara is growing twice as fast a H&M, …