In our September 18th podcast we discussed six major issues that retailers and brands are wrestling with going into the 2021 Holiday season. At the top of the list, and the one that significantly affects how to deal with the other five, is what will consumer behavior look like now that the more virulent Delta variant has emerged and is wreaking havoc...all over again. Disruption Accelerated Even prior to the first wave of Covid-19, the industry was living in a world of major disruption, triggered by the internet and ecommerce. Digital …
Operations
Marketplaces Make Money
With growing consumer dependence on sites like Amazon, Uber and Airbnb, we are squarely in a platform economy. This means that a significant amount of buying and selling today takes place via an online platform or technology framework. Savvy retailers are shifting to digital-first transactions – and benefit from engagement and sales – by incorporating a marketplace strategy into their roadmap. What is a Marketplace? Online marketplaces offer almost every product and service category from travel and retail to household services. A marketplace …
Two Things Changing Retail Forever
Triggered by Walmart’s recent announcement that they are launching a delivery service called Walmart GoLocal (that can be shared with any, and all other retailers, including competitors), I suddenly realized that we are witnessing a breakout moment that will forever change the face and defining characteristics of retail. And it’s not just Walmart’s delivery service, because there are several other previous models such as Target’s Shipt. My point regarding these two transformative drivers of change is that they were only visible as mere …
America’s Great Service Crisis
Even before the pandemic hit the U.S. market, customer service has been on a decline. Looking back over the past year and half, America's “Great Service Decline” has continued, accelerated by a number of disruptive post-Covid issues. Check out our podcast Platinum Service Turns to Tin with Robin Lewis for an interesting conversation! Pre-Covid Service Shifts Let’s take a look at a brief history of the service decline. Retailers and brands have been steadily reducing effective in-store employee training and some have turned to online …
Brands Dip into Resales
That 2015 Balenciaga teddy bear faux fur coat that I decided against haunts me to this day. While the luxury resale market is expanding along with the rest of the category, that coat in my size is still hanging in someone else's closet. It is not alone; a recent report from BoF Insights estimates that approximately 95 percent of resaleable fashion inventory is hanging in the homes of the original buyer, much of it sitting idle. Pay It Forward The global addressable inventory represents $2 trillion in potential earnings for resale platforms …
Why the New Bed Bath & Beyond Store is the Best Retail Redo…Ever
Few individual retail stores have had the ups and downs of the Bed Bath & Beyond store on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. And with its grand reopening in July as the flagship for the rapidly changing home furnishings retailer, the store has taken on yet another persona, as the future of the Big Box chain. And in this renovation process, a case can be made that it may be the most dramatic transformation of an existing physical store in recent retail history…perhaps all of retail history. That’s how transformed the store is. Bed Bath & …
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Cater to Your Customers — Locally
There's an old adage: You get what you get, and you don't get upset. Clearly, that doesn't apply to retail. For some time now, the axiom has been customers want what they want, when they want it. And Covid-19 accelerated that. Apparel shoppers want choices, and they want the stores and clothes to reflect their local tastes and demands. And they still want what they want when, where and how they want it delivered. Post-Pandemic Paradigms Coresight Research says the pandemic "accelerated consumer disinterest in homogeneous physical retail …
The Revival of Strip Centers
How many times have you walked or driven past a grocery-anchored strip center and been surprised? Never. It’s the same old, same old … year in and year out. But you may not have realized that this half-century old phenomenon is perhaps the most consistently profitable model in today’s ravaged shopping center sector. Grocery Anchors You may have also missed some significant news in the grocery-anchored (G-A) sector this spring, which slipped beneath the radar of most mainstream media (except for the prosaic supermarket and finance industry …