It’s supposed to be the collaboration of the decade. Right when Kanye West’s Yeezy brand launched its interactive 3D website, Mr. West announced a new ongoing collaboration with Gap. Kanye will remodel a Gap outlet downtown Chicago as part of the deal. It seems like a good idea, right? The Yeezy/Adidas sneaker collab was hugely successful and Yeezy brought in $1.3 billion last year alone. But this doesn’t mean that Yeezy would also bring new life to the ailing mall-based retailer. There are five reasons why the Gap collaboration won’t match …
Experience
Six Unexpected Takeaways from Covid-19
Covid-19 has now been around long enough for us to start drawing some conclusions from our shared experiences. The Pandemic is far from over and has prompted almost everyone to think deeply about their lives, relationships, values and attitudes. Part of this re-evaluation has been caused by so much extra time in shelter, watching a medical, economic and social justice drama unfold on our screens of choice. For essential workers, it has been a 24/7 call to action; for nonessential workers it has been an opportunity to reflect and reset. For …
A Mental Health Crisis: Gen Z and Coronavirus
The hot topic on everyone’s minds is: why won’t Gen Z stay inside? The answer to this question is complicated, but it also has big implications for the retail industry. The world is in a tizzy about the behavior of Next-Gens during Covid. Gen Z is taking fewer precautions than any other generation to prevent virus spread. Only slightly over half (57 percent) are social distancing and there was an onslaught of photos of Gen Z and millennials partying it up over spring break on the beach. While, at first glance, it may appear that Gen Z is …
The Covid-19 Shakeout
They say retailing is a zero-sum game. For every winner there is a loser. For every Amazon there is a Sears. It's all about market share and at no time will that be more accurate than in the period we're entering now as consumers return to retail stores and start shopping again. The survival game will play out in many consumer product sectors but for the home furnishings business it will be more pronounced than most. Entire channels will prosper and within them specific retailers will gain share while for others, the losses will be not only …
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 …
Millennial and Gen Z Trust in a Newly Reopened World
It’s a strange time to come of age, but Gen Z is doing just that in a world on lockdown. While it’s beginning to look like there’s light at the end of the tunnel for nonessential retailers, NextGen consumers have been profoundly impacted by the Covid crisis and their purchasing behavior will never be the same. Young consumers’ trust, and engagement with brands during shutdowns will play a factor in what brands they choose to patronize when stores reopen. The number of available entry-level jobs will also play a factor, as that determines …
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Mom & Pop and Hope
After a hurricane or earthquake or terrorist attack, the first tentative sign of a return to normalcy is the reopening of the neighborhood shops and markets. When Mom & Pop merchants demonstrate their hopefulness for the future, they are signaling the rest of us to begin to rebuild our routine. Essential Nostalgia Regardless of what side you take in the debate over when to reopen small businesses, who among us doesn't yearn to return to our favorite coffee shop, restaurant or watering hole to order our "usual"-the drink or meal that …
Experiential Retailing: Done That…But Not Anymore
The retailing industry is going to have to look for another savior. At least for the time being. In what amounted to a near-non-stop barrage, every expert and his brother has been talking about how physical retail stores need to become more experiential to combat the move to shopping online. No matter that hardly anybody could truly define what experiential retailing actually was, but everyone knew that was the ticket to retailing nirvana. That is, until that ticket got punched with the coronavirus. All of a sudden - and it really was all of …