America’s beauty queens, Ulta and Sephora, have been going head-to-head in the U.S. market since Ulta launched in 1990, and Sephora opened its first store in SoHo in 1998, and online in 1999. Today the LVMH owned Sephora boasts 2,700 stores worldwide and expects to reach over 712 stores in the U.S. this year with its recent alliance with Kohl’s to create 200 shop-in-shop locations within its stores. By comparison, Ulta has 1,301 U.S. stores. Plans call for 1,500 to 1,700, new stores, including the opening of a projected one hundred …
Management
The Challenges of Change Management
In the workplace, everyone experiences change. How we experience it can vary greatly. Over the many years of my career, I have been a recipient of change, an implementer of change, as well as a decision-maker of what changes are to be made. Unfortunately, most change is painful. In many instances, the process of change management fails or leaves a path of frustration and negative consequences before it ultimately powers through to a successful outcome. No one should ever expect change to be a frictionless process; however, with the right focus …
SaksWorks and SPARC: Victims of Fatal Attractions
I’m not quite sure where I want to go with this. I think we may wind up with many more questions than answers. However, one thing I am sure of is that we are living in crazy times, in many profound ways, including the transformation of the retail industry. The recent formations of SPARC and SaksWorks are crazy-times strategies to “unlock value” (which is often counterintuitive to operating a successful retail business). Retailers or Real Estate Moguls? Let’s start with Richard Baker, Executive Chairman of HBC. We’ve been tracking his HBC real …
Leadership in an Evolving Pandemic
Leading in a Time of Ambiguity Living though a pandemic is shadowed by nearly constant uncertainty. We take three steps forward, two sideways and unfortunately, then three steps backwards. Innovators have been able to pivot and transform their business models to meet the needs of their stakeholders. Retail organizations that have calcified cultures with command-and-control management models have been or are being easily eclipsed by agile competitors. So, which category characterizes your own organization: are you innovative or is your …
Forever 21: Third Try in China, Charmed or Strikeout?
On October 9, 2019, I wrote Forever 21: Cut Your Losses and Die Happily and predicted Forever 21’s demise, and why. And predictably, they slipped into bankruptcy. However, they found a life-support respirator, a collective called Authentic Brands Group, Simon Properties and Brookfield Property Partners, who acquired the brand for $81 million in February 2020. The plan was for Forever 21’s international business to be handled by licensing specialist ABG. The brand was tossed into ABG’s pile of other losing brands. Then, along with Simon …
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Saks’ Bold Move
When news broke recently that HBC was splitting Saks Fifth Avenue into two, spinning off its ecommerce business from its brick-and-mortar stores, speculation swirled about the thinking behind the move. That news was followed shortly by an announcement that it was doing the same for its off-price Saks Off 5th company, separating the stores from its digital platform. The Joys of Going Private Since going private in 2019, HBC CEO Richard Baker doesn’t have to answer to the Street. He has a free pass to assert that the Saks move is “redefining …
CSR in the Age of Transparency
I read great reviews of the film The Summer of Soul, a documentary directed by Questlove, known to many as the bandleader of The Roots, the in-house band for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. A treasure trove of well-preserved footage was discovered after the death of the cinematographer who documented the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival. A talented team led by Questlove, who directed the documentary, pieced together spectacular performances featuring a 19-year-old Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, a new group called Gladys Knight and the Pips, …
Is Retail a Career?
As a four trillion dollar slice of the economy, retail is one of the largest employment sectors in the U.S. Prior to the pandemic, it provided direct and indirect employment to some 52 million workers, second only to the healthcare sector. Many of these jobs – as many as 30 percent of them – are comprised of the workers who staff brick-and-mortar store locations yet filling these frontline positions has become increasingly challenging in the post-pandemic era. Recruitment on the Rocks The Society for Human Resource Management, better known by …