Shoptalk Meetup was announced less than two weeks ago and with more than 2,000 attendees from over 1,000 companies registered, it's already the fall's largest retail event. Attendance is capped, so you better get on the waitlist now. I've said it before, and I'm saying it again, Anil Aggarwal, founder of Shoptalk, is a master disruptor. When he talks about connecting the retail ecosystem through industry events, he lives and speaks in terms of thousands (attendees) and millions (investment dollars). And those numbers have kept growing with …
Management
It’s Now or Never for Wayfair
You can find just about anything for your home on Wayfair.com. But what you can't find is any black ink. In the middle of what is undoubtably the greatest surge of online buying in the history of the business, Wayfair - the largest dedicated home furnishings e-commerce player - is racking up double digit sales gains. In the process it's seen its stock rebound from a dangerously precipitous freefall just a few months ago to its all-time high. Being at the sweet spot at the convergence of trapped shoppers moving their purchasing online and …
Beauty Gets Ugly
Admittedly it was a very "Barbie In Her Beauty Bubble" stance to take, but this was my first thought when Forbes dropped its "Kylie Jenner fooled us about her billionaire status" bombshell: Wait -- by Forbes's calculations she's worth $900M? That's so close! But then I remembered that old saw about horseshoes and hand grenades - and this little thing called shareholders - and I knew I had to do some serious digging and reading to understand the ramifications for all parties involved. If Coty overpaid for its 51 percent stake of Kylie …
Pandemic Planning Is No Panacea
Business continuity planning alone is not enough to survive a global pandemic. There is no amount of planning that could have prepared retailers for what has transpired over the past several months. This is especially true for retailers and brands which distribute exclusively in the U.S. where a significant percentage of revenue was abruptly cut off when stores closed. The coronavirus enveloped the country in one quick, fell swoop, especially disrupting retailers which began the year on a strong footing, building on solid performances from …
Under Armour: More Than a Covid-19 Bump
Let's hear it one more time: Those who were at-risk before Covid-19 are more likely to succumb and die from it. And Under Armour came into the pandemic on life support. In fact, it had its own pandemic virus beginning at the end of 2016, and I wrote about it: "Is Kevin Plank into "Alt-Facts?". The Q4 2016 results presaged the early symptoms of an Under Armour pandemic, which would continue to ravage the brand right smack into the throes of Covid-19. Prior to those Q4 results of a mere 12 percent increase in revenues, Under Armour was hitting …
Survival of the Fittest
The "once in a life-time" impact on retail created as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the secular shift that has gradually been impacting retail for the past 10+ years; namely the shift to digital and the declining viability of regional "B," "C" and "D" malls. This secular shift over the past decade has resulted in a gradual decline in retailer productivity and profitability as, for most retailers, digital sales represented a cannibalization of their brick-and-mortar store volume, rather than an increase in total revenue. Many …
J.Crew and Neiman Marcus: A “Not What You Think” Lesson
The retail and general business media are jammed with news, insights and perspectives around the bankruptcies of J.Crew and Neiman Marcus. And unfortunately, too many readers could finish these articles believing that a heavy debt load combined with the shutdown due to Covid-19, were the major culprits in bringing these brands down. There are many other major factors that pushed them onto a declining curve beginning in the early to mid-2000s. So, in my opinion, they were heading to a cliff's edge long before the virus. It just accelerated their …
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OMG!! A Final Gap “Hail Mary” Play?
A Case for Euthanasia? Gap on Life Support In 2011, I opened with this salvo: "I don't care how much cash The Gap is sitting on or how much they generate on a daily basis. Just as Sears keeps pumping blood (cash), through its veins, Gap is, and has been for a long time, staying alive on "life support." Essentially, the body (the retail business) is dying, but the nearest and dearest relatives (shareholders and the Board) obviously do not want to pull the proverbial plug. They all stand around the dying patient, hoping for some kind of miracle …