“Signet is a company transformed.” That was the message that CEO Virginia Drosos delivered at Signet Jewelers’ first investor day presentation since pre-pandemic 2019. “Signet’s financial health has gone from being an impediment preventing appropriate investment in the business and talent, to being a significant competitive advantage,” she continued. Taking her victory lap, she highlighted key accomplishments since the last investor presentation, including: Investing $750 million toward growth strategies, largely funded by cost …
Management
From A to BBB: The Real Reasons Why Bed Bath & Beyond Went Bust
The post-mortem obituaries for Bed Bath & Beyond have been coming fast and furiously after the Big Box home furnishings retailer filed for bankruptcy in late April and subsequently headed for liquidation and its final resting place deep beneath the retail terra firma. There are so many factors playing into this demise, all the more astonishing given the speed at which what was not too long ago one of America’s best retailers melted down. Whereas other similar scenarios involving companies like Toys’R’Us, JCPenney, or Tuesday Morning were …
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Uniqlo: Third Time Charm or Three Strikes Out?
Uniqlo (a division of Fast Retailing) opened its first store in New York City in 2006. By 2015 they had 39 stores around the country, which has crept up to about 47 stores today, mostly in major cities on the East and West Coasts. So what? The “so what” has to do with CEO Tadashi Yanai’s ambition beginning in 1984 when he took over the reins from his father to grow the Japanese brand to become the number-one apparel and accessory brand in the world. So what, again? After almost a quarter of a century since their first store in NYC, …
Gen Z at Work
Employee retention has reached a new low. In the retail industry, frontline employee turnover has been at 60 percent for years, tying with hospitality as the vertical with the highest turnover. But today, 63 percent of frontline retail managers are thinking about quitting in the near future. It is a whole new world now that boomers are retiring, and Gen Z has entered the skilled workforce. And Gen Z never differs from their millennial and Gen X predecessors in more ways than their career priorities. Case in point: Most Gen Z employees have a …
Tom Kingsbury’s Kohl’s Conundrum: Finding Life after Coupons, Cash and Barbarians at the Gates
Tom Kingsbury probably has as good a reputation as anybody in the retail business. Ask those who have worked for him, done business with him or followed his career and they generally have positive things to say. And Kingsbury’s achievements in turning around Burlington -- the off-price player that was a perennial underperformer but became a profitable -- are universally admired. Now as the CEO of Kohl’s, he will need every bit of those skills, good will and perhaps some luck of the draw to turn around what is one of the more troubled …
Growing Retail C-Suite Vacancies
There’s a growing crisis in retail C-suites. Nobody wants the top job. VF, Adidas, Calvin Klein, Puma, Designer Brands, Stitch Fix and Rite Aid have longstanding vacancies ready to fill. Gap is close to announcing a permanent replacement for Sonia Syngal who left the company in the middle of last year, but it will have another CEO position to fill for the Athleta brand after Mary Beth Laughton makes her exit. And Gap’s chief people officer is on the way out as well. To fill the open slots, board members are moving from their interim roles …
Amazon’s Disruption Just Gets Worse
As if Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s migraine isn’t big enough with the challenge of redefining Amazon’s entire business Jassy to Employees: Redefine Amazon, he now has 14,000 of his employees (so far) who joined a Slack channel, called “Remote Advocacy,” intended to share a virulent pushback on Jassy’s surprise mandate that the majority of employees would be required to come into the office "at least three days per week" starting in May. According to Insider magazine, Jassy’s mandate said, "collaborating and inventing is easier and more effective …
Amazon and Barnes & Noble: A Giant Irony
The ironies that keep popping up at Amazon, post-Jeff Bezos’ departure as CEO, are truly astounding. And the one that stands out most is Amazon’s closing of all 66 Amazon Books in the U.S. and two in the United Kingdom. A Vision Lost? No one would argue that Bezos is a genius. Great entrepreneurs usually are (or they simply come up with a gee-whiz commonsense idea that nobody else had thought of). The only flaw in his greatness, as I have said before, is that he should have departed earlier before Amazon failed in its attempts at rolling …