Opinion

Eddie (no vision) Lampert: A Century Late and an Idea Short

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What’s old is new again. It’s back to the future. Mobile phones are the new stores. These and many other metaphors reflect how the technology age is taking us back in time to century-old retail models. Living with technology on steroids will not only revive and make these models new again, but will also geometrically accelerate and propel those models through the next century. And, not so surprisingly, Eddie (no vision) Lampert, CEO of Sears Holdings, doesn’t have a clue. I pick on him not just because I enjoy doing so, but because I have …

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Seasonal Line-Cycles:Going, Going…Gone

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Zara’s Process Innovation Trumps Product Innovation Zara was first in envisioning what the newly emerging techno-empowered 21st-century consumer would be demanding of the fashion world. They acted on it almost two decades ago, while the rest of the old world was sleeping. Today, while retailing past is playing catch up (or imploding), Zara continues to be the largest, best, and fastest. Their key ingredient, which most retailers do not understand—or if they do, could not pull off anyway—is Zara’s invention of a totally controlled value chain …

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Is Kohl’s Flatlining?

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Brilliant Strategists Blindsided? Since 2012, it would appear that Kohl’s might be flatlining (which is drastically dire especially in medical terms). Revenues grew a meager two percent from $18.8 billion in 2012 to slightly over $19 billion in 2013, and sales hovered around that number over the next two years, ending at about $19.2 billion in 2015.  Over the same four-year period, gross margin dropped from 38.20 percent to 36.40 percent, operating margin from 11.50 percent to 8.90 percent, net margin from 6.21 percent to 4.56 percent and net …

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You Can Run, But You Can’t Hide

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Scraping the Bottom for Another Share You are about to open the door into the “house of horrors.” If you’re already in a bad mood, you might want to skip over this blog.  But if you want the real unvarnished truth about how dismal the marketplace is today and how it’s trending into the foreseeable future (likely into a greater horror show), then take some deep breaths and read on. Oh, and by the way, I could not even bring myself to offer up the same old bromides about how you might succeed in this mess. You’ve heard them a million times …

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Planes, Trains, Trucks and Ships

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It seems Amazon is now “nuking” everybody.  Last week it was nuking the fashion industry.  This week, the armed ballistic missile is pointed at the global shipping industry.  In a world of hyper-competition, its plan to launch a global shipping and logistics operation certainly indicates Amazon’s understanding of the power of vertical integration and owning one’s total value chain. Since speed, convenience and the lowest possible prices define the core strengths of Amazon’s business model, having ownership or control of all elements in its …

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Amazon’s Fashion “Nuke”

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Several years ago, Jeff Bezos said that Amazon had to figure out how to get their fashion business “right.”  Subsequently, they began building an organization of seasoned fashion professionals who now believe it’s time for Amazon’s “coming out party.” So, with a one-two punch, they’ve quietly launched seven private apparel brands and a daily live streaming fashion show called “Style Code Live.” And these are just the most recent initiatives. The entire fashion industry, including retailers, has been shoveling its brands and styles through …

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From Near Death, JC Penney Is Ready For Take Off

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Marvin Ellison delivered. In his first year as the CEO of JC Penney he has achieved enough positive growth measures to give credence to his three-year turnaround plan. Formerly EVP of stores at Home Depot, Ellison was brought in by CEO Mike Ullman in late 2014 as President and CEO-Designee, (to replace Ullman as CEO in August of 2015). Ellison’s charge was to put JC Penney back on a growth trajectory. Ullman, who had been called back as CEO in April of 2013 to save JC Penney from plummeting to its death, had stabilized the business enough to …

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Happy New Year!

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Not Much Happy or New About It, Except... This Holiday Season, Santa’s sleigh was so overstuffed that he was able to leave a lot of nearly-free, and even-free gifts under the trees of our nation’s homes. So Daddy, Mommy and the kids were pretty happy. But following his rounds to all those happy homes, he still had so much stuff in his sleigh that it crashed. Santa survived with a few cuts and bruises, but he was unable to unload his second round to the nation’s retailers, all of whom were hoping to further discount their already-discounted …

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