Next time you find yourself on a road trip through Pennsylvania, consider a short detour to the corner of Baum Boulevard and St. Clair Street in downtown Pittsburgh. Admittedly, today there is not much to see – nothing more than a nondescript office building abutted by Walter’s Automotive Repair Shop. But back in 1913 this small parcel of land was the site of arguably the biggest revolution in American retail – the advent of the modern gas station; if you know where to look, there is even a historic marker that commemorates America’s “First …
The New Luxury: Sustainable Fashion
What will luxury look like moving forward? Ask a millennial or Gen Z and they will unequivocally say, “Sustainable.” This isn’t just a slogan; it’s becoming an operating principle. We caught up with Tina Bhojwani, the CEO of Aera, the world’s first sustainable luxury footwear brand and a co-founder of Figure Eight, a pop-up installation in New York’s Soho neighborhood dedicated to showcasing an eclectic portfolio of innovative, stylish sustainable luxury goods. Footwear with an Invisible Footprint After an impressive career in the world of …
The Marriage Between Healthcare and Retail: Divorce is Not an Option
Young couples oftentimes struggle in the early years of their marriage as they both adjust to the new life dynamics of sharing everything from bedsheets to bank accounts, and it’s a metaphor that could aptly be used to characterize a great many retail and healthcare newlyweds. Some may argue that hospitals and primary care clinics are actually sheepish retail businesses dressed in wolves’ clothing – ones that happen to be, generally speaking, really, really bad at the customer-experience side of their businesses. Nonetheless, over the last …
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Retail Is the Metaphor for This Moment
Recently was invited to cover a major retail industry event in São Paulo, Brazil entitled Expo Magalu – a one-day extravaganza that brought together, virtually and in-person, over 15,000 small and medium-sized independent retailers for a day of discussion about how to transform traditional brick-and-mortar businesses into omnichannel sellers with a significant ecommerce presence. The array of educational and networking sessions focused on next-generation logistics, payments, online store building, and a host of other related issues – even a …
Is Retail a Career?
As a four trillion dollar slice of the economy, retail is one of the largest employment sectors in the U.S. Prior to the pandemic, it provided direct and indirect employment to some 52 million workers, second only to the healthcare sector. Many of these jobs – as many as 30 percent of them – are comprised of the workers who staff brick-and-mortar store locations yet filling these frontline positions has become increasingly challenging in the post-pandemic era. Recruitment on the Rocks The Society for Human Resource Management, better known by …
New York City Retail is Flailing
On June 22, New York City Democrats and Republicans will head to the polls in the primary election to select their candidates for Mayor. The current mix of candidates – eight Democrats and two Republicans – represents a diverse mix of personalities that largely mirrors the ethnic, religious, and socio-economic mélange that is New York City. And although some may think that in a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly 7-to-1 it is a foregone conclusion that the winner of the Democratic primary will eventually become win the November …
Target Commits to Black-Owned Businesses
Retail behemoth Target Corporation’s recent announcement that it has committed to spending more than $2 billion by 2025 on products and services from Black-owned businesses, including ramping up the number of minority-owned brands on store shelves and Target.com to at least 500, is setting a new bar for what it means to be a retailer in an era when racial justice and equality are front and center in American national discourse. The mega retailer also announced that it would engage with more advertising, marketing, and construction companies …
Five Macrotrends That Will Drive Traditional Retail’s Big Comeback
For the better part of a year – ever since the onset of Covid-19 – the doomsday diviners of retail have held center stage, pushing the narrative that brick-and-mortar retail will never come back, or if it does, it will surely be in some new, emasculated form that will be virtually unrecognizable to a time traveler from 2019. “Malls throughout America are suddenly running out of time,” exclaimed a recent USA Today report on the state of retail. Rhode Island’s Providence Journal went even further, stating that “the coronavirus pandemic will not …
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