As retail chains have gotten ever larger – stretching into the hundreds, thousands and even tens of thousands of units – management at the country’s largest players has always struggled with how to cater to local tastes and preferences. Some national chains have taken the McDonald’s approach: the same thing every time in every place. It’s worked for Walmart, Target, and others like Costco. Familiarity breeds trust. But over the course of retailing history, some companies have chosen to try to localize their assortments to fit specific …
Aldi: The Little Store That Could
When it opened its first American store in March of 1976, both shoppers and the grocery industry, in general, must have been a bit befuddled by this unknown import from Germany called Aldi. Consumers who ventured into the store in the local Kmart-anchored strip center in Iowa City, IA had to be confused by the odd assortment of private label brands and severely restricted offering of just 450 items. Where was the Hellmann’s, where were the Oreos? Competing supermarkets were also trying to figure out how this store at around …
The Reinvention of America’s Superhighway Gas Stations
This is a story about a giant buck-toothed beaver, a forlorn legacy brand that is going to be reborn under new owners and a store format that was once more suited for mamouth diesel tractor-trailer trucks than families out for vacation. It’s also about a retail sector that has driven under the radar – literally – but is now emerging as a legitimate place for consumers to shop not just for gasoline and giant drinks, but apparel, home furnishings, gifts and just about anything else your local dollar store, convenience outlet or even discount …
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Lego: Building an Empire Brick by Brick
It wasn’t all that long ago – since about the arrival of the first Gen Zer – that Lego was virtually bankrupt and on the brink of going out of business. Fast forward to that grown-up Gen Zer and it is now the largest toy company on the planet, believed to be enormously profitable and held up as the gold standard for every other brand in the business. One Brick at a Time How did they do it? How did Lego go from bust to boom in fewer than 20 years? As clichéd as it sounds, Lego rebuilt its business one brick at a time. Today, Lego is a $9.7 …
The Latest Homeless Crisis: The Missing $7 Billion in Retail Sales
As recently as just a few years ago, Bed Bath & Beyond did over $5 billion in annual retail sales. Tuesday Morning was doing close to $700 million a year before it closed. Christmas Tree Shops, privately owned before it also announced its closing, had a yearly estimated revenue of about the same level, $700 million. Throw in the home furnishings sales of a few other chains that have gone belly-up like David’s Bridal, Party City and Sears Hometown and you can add in another $100 or $200 million in sales, easy. Put it all together and …
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Barbie: The Doll, the Movie, the Stuff…Your Life
The intersection of movies and merchandising is a long, tortured road with more than its fair share of boffo success stories and bombs...both at the box office and on retail racks. Merch tie-ins with movies – and movie stars – go way back. One of the first real licensing deals involving Hollywood and retail was with Shirley Temple way back in the 1930s with a long-gone glassware company called Hazel Atlas. Ever since the temptation to connect merchandise with entertainment properties has been irresistible. Certainly, action and superhero …
When Does Crime Prevention Turn into Sales Prevention?
We all know about Amazon’s just-walk-out format. And just-in-time supply chain systems have been the rage for decades. Now, welcome to just-say-no retailing. It’s a thing. Theft and stealing in retail stores have become a legitimate problem across the country, both simple and singular acts and larger-scale coordinated robberies that result in significant hits to store merchandise levels. The National Retail Federation says total annual shrink, all-in, hit $94.5 billion in 2021, up from $90.8 billion the year before. Target alone said it’s …
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Pop Goes the Retailer
If you look up the word “Pop-tailer” in the dictionary, you will find...well, actually you won’t find anything. It doesn’t exist...until now. That’s because we are christening the term as a new breed of retail that combines a fun shopping environment with a merchandise assortment that largely reflects “wants” rather than “needs” and throws in a touch of whimsy as extra flavoring. And it’s most certainly targeted a younger customer. The pop-tailer is the latest idea to capture shoppers’ imagination in a number of emerging retail formats. The …