For the last 25 years, the National Retail Federation (NRF) has kicked off the holiday shopping season in early October with its forecast for holiday retail spending, covering the critical November-December retail sales. This year, however, it waited until the end of November to make its prediction, and as per usual, it was exceedingly optimistic. NRF’s Retail View According to NRF, retail sales will rise between 3.6 percent to 5.2 percent this year for the last two months of the year, excluding automobile dealers, gasoline stations and …
Contentious Acquisition…at What Cost?
Ever since I heard the news that LVMH wanted out of its deal to acquire Tiffany and Company and the two companies' resulting suit and countersuits, George Harrison's "Sue Me, Sue You Blues" has been an earworm playing in my head: You serve me And I'll serve you Swing your partners, all get screwed. Bring your lawyer And I'll bring mine Get together, and we could have a bad time. Buyer's Remorse Speculation has swirled for months that LVMH has buyer's remorse after agreeing last November to pay $16.2 billion or $135 per share for …
Shakespeare & Co. Is Out to Transform the Entire Book Industry Supply Chain
In 2019, bookstores’ revenues were a shade above what they were 25 years ago, only $10.6 billion, falling from a high of $17.2 billion in 2007, according to the Census data. Amazon doesn’t report its book sales, but Statista puts the U.S. book publishing industry at ~$26 billion. You do the math. Decline and Fall While Amazon was gobbling up market share in the book business, it also decimated the bookselling industry. The Census Bureau is not as generous with data on the number of retail businesses as it is in reporting revenues, but in …
Shakespeare & Co. Is Out to Transform the Entire Book Industry Supply ChainRead More
In the Post-Covid World, Every Retailer Needs to Find Its “Essential”
As in Dicken's Tale of Two Cities, when we write the story of retail in 2020 it is going to be the best of times for one group of retailers - those deemed essential - and the worst of times for others - non-essential retailers. Two new studies, one from IBM projecting retail through year-end and another from UBS looking out to 2025, tell the tale of the best and worst to come. Retail's Uneven Bounceback Overall, IBM has good news to report: 2020 should end with retail down only three percent, excluding auto-related and food services. "The …
In the Post-Covid World, Every Retailer Needs to Find Its “Essential”Read More
The Road to Remarkable Retail Is a Long One
There is a select group of retailers that meet their customers' expectations. They are retailers that carry the products customers expect, at the prices they expect, and have staff in the store who service them like they expect. Then there are the few remarkable retailers who do something quite different. They over deliver customers’ needs in unexpected ways, exceeding all expectations. At every turn, they do the unexpected, offer products customers didn’t know they needed, and provide customer service that surprises and delights. When …
Get Ready for the Great Retail Reckoning
"Make no mistake, it's not revenge he's after. It's a reckoning." That was one of Val Kilmer's (as Doc Holliday) many memorable lines from the 1993 movie Tombstone, referring to Kurt Russell 's (Wyatt Earp) vendetta against the "cowboy" faction that killed his brother. I like to think I have an extensive vocabulary, but that reference to "reckoning" sent me to the dictionary where I discovered an archaic meaning of the term as "a bill, a payment or settlement of an account." Pay Up A reckoning, or a settlement of an account, describes what …
Retail Is Sick: It’s Time for Wellness
I recently participated in a retail webinar on wellness. My main message was that retailers limit themselves if they think of wellness just in terms of products consumers use, wear close to their body, put on their skin or decorate their homes with. All retailers, nonessential and otherwise, have been massively disrupted during the nationwide coronavirus shutdowns. Upon reopening, if they ever do, retailers have an unprecedented opportunity to reevaluate and reassess every aspect of their businesses, not just how to reassure their staff and …
Luxury, Post-Covid
Letting no crisis go to waste, the MBB big-three consulting firms - McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group, and Bain & Company - have all come out with their post-coronavirus predictions for the luxury market. I've spent hours digesting their reports, including interviewing Bain's Claudia D'Aprizio, who is arguably the world's leading authority on the luxury market, trying to get a clear picture of what to expect coming out of this global pandemic. Loss Leaders All MBBs are predicting dramatic 2020 losses for the ~$300 billion …