Over the next 50 years, Nielsen research predicts the Black population is expected to grow by 22 percent while the White (non-Hispanic) population is expected to shrink by 27 percent. Spending power among Black Americans is expected to reach $1.8 trillion by next year. Retail is an industry known for its customer-facing roles and direct influence on consumers' buying habits, and it is supposed to mirror society. “Supposed to” are key words. But it's concerning to see the opposite—the lack of diversity in the legacy corporate American retail …
Opinion
Target’s Big Fail
In today’s world, where corporate responsibility, culture wars, and social progress are more or less bound to become intertwined strands of any major national discussion, Minnesota-based Target Corporation’s recent decision to move to the back or completely withdraw selected Gay Pride/LGBTQ+ merchandise from its stores marks a new low in Fortune 500 cowardice. Specifically, what has earned Target my rancor is the company’s puzzling response to conservative pressure over its decision to prominently display LGBTQ+-related clothing and merchandise …
Just Adding Home Won’t Make Banana Republic a Lifestyle Brand
Banana Republic is a brand with a mission: to build a brand with character and a personality that truly resonates with customers. It had that in spades on its founding in 1978 by Mel and Patricia Ziegler when it was named Banana Republic Travel & Safari Clothing Company, selling the virtual safari experience through clothes. I still remember fondly a safari jacket I bought there. A Short History Banana Republic was an aspirational, experiential brand before those terms were thrown about so frequently in marketing circles. Then in …
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Undertaker Eddie: It’s Done. It’s Over. R.I.P.
With all due respect, after two decades of my tracking Eddie Lampert’s brilliant financially engineered demise of Sears and Kmart, while he personally pocketed a few billion dollars of “unlocked value” along the way, I would have loved to deliver that eulogy to him as my final word. However, a headline in a recent Retail Dive article referred to the fact that the Supreme Court rejected an attempt from Lampert and his other lenders to wring millions more from what’s left of the former retail giant. This followed three other courts rejecting …
Cautionary Tales of Big Tech and Your Business
Let’s take a pause. Have you been keeping track of the tech news? We’re entering a new phase of our obsession with technology and its influence. This is not an essay on turning a blind eye to the power of technology nor a rejection of its synergistic role in improving the human condition. But rather, this is a voice for the skeptics that are monitoring our steps and missteps. What does it have to do with retail? It has everything to do with how everyone is navigating a brave new world that has no unified playbook – and that includes leadership, …
What Do Zuckerberg, Musk and SBF (Who?) Have in Common?
Zuck, Musk and SBF: What do these entrepreneurs have in common? A large dose of hubris, ultimately soaring to failure. And they are not alone. However, they are arguably the best well-known, anti-hero poster children of the moment, largely due to their dizzying ability to shed billions of dollars in value and thousands of shareholders and employees literally overnight. By the way SBF is the moniker for Sam Bankma-Fried, headline making founder of FTX, a crypto exchange he started in 2019 that soared to a value of $32 billion by January of 2022, …
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Retail Could Have Been a Game Changer at CGI
Some use the moniker ‘Davos-on-Hudson’ to describe the Clinton Global Initiative – better known colloquially as ‘CGI’ by global movers and shakers. But no matter what name it goes by, historically, the annual gathering during UN Week in September has arguably been one of the hottest invites to come by on planet earth. Where else besides Davos can you rub elbows with U2’s Bono, heads of state, and the CEO of Unilever – all within the confines of a few thousand square feet in Midtown Manhattan? CGI Field Report This year I was fortunate to …
Dress Codes Are Back, But Consumer Response Is Mixed
Retail operates like a pendulum. For years, the fashion pendulum has been swinging towards the hyper-casual. I wrote about the alleged “death of athleisure” as a false alarm nearly a decade ago. Not to be that smartest guy in the room, but my prediction was accurate that athleisure is here to stay. Today, so-casual-its-hilarious companies like Crocs are collaborating with the likes of luxury brands Stella McCartney and Balenciaga. The pandemic exacerbated this trend, with manufacturers unleashing a surge of jewelry and dresses built for the …
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