Strategy

Just as Amazon and the internet in general continue to disrupt and transform the legacy publishing and broadcast industries, we are in the early stages of a major disruption of the legacy world of advertising. Amazon and Walmart are two leading forces that are fundamentally changing retail marketing communications. Ad Agency Reset Amazon was among the first, and now the largest mover, among retailers to launch its own advertising agency business logging in at over $31 billion in 2021, up from $21 billion in 2020, with a 77 percent share …

Can Walmart Connect Threaten Amazon’s Lead in the Advertising Business?Read More

For the record: Amazon, based in Seattle, WA, is a global, primarily online marketplace which sells vendors’ and their own goods to consumers. Shopify, headquartered in Ottawa, Canada, is a worldwide technology platform that primarily provides the tools, (software) and instructions for small businesses to quickly and easily create their own online shops. Ranging from $30 to $2000 a month, Shopify offers sellers over a dozen services to run an online store: the website domain name; inventory and content management; payment processing and …

Amazon’s Gift to ShopifyRead More

Is Amazon a suitor for Kohl’s? If not yet, perhaps it should be. And maybe Kohl’s is entertaining the possibility. Back in 2017, I stated that Kohl’s was launching its first few Amazon in-store shops as tests to drive younger customer store traffic to make a few Kohl’s sales across the aisle when they were visiting Amazon.  Five years later it is still a win/win for both brands. At the time, I suggested that the partnership could very well be viewed as a much larger, long-term, first-stage strategy of Amazon to acquire Kohl’s. In the …

Is Amazon a Kohl’s Suitor?Read More

For years we’ve talked about the 72-million strong millennial generation (born between 1981 and 1996) as the next-gen customers for luxury brands. But now there is an even younger generation on the horizon, Gen Z (born from 1997 to 2012), 67 million and counting. Note to self: immigration continues to add to their numbers. Similar But Different Like siblings born in the same family, millennials and Gen Z share similarities, but the greater the age difference, the greater the differences in the worlds they grew up in. Sixteen years …

Luxury’s Got a New Change Agent: Gen ZRead More

The luxury market has been built on exclusivity. The U.S. is still the largest global luxury market and luxury sector sales continue to soar – even through the pandemic. But how we define luxury is changing. First of all, the very tenets that the legacy fashion houses hung their hats on –– exclusivity, high price points, etc. –– are proving less relevant to younger customers. Luxury has always been about status. The concepts of craftsmanship, style, innovation and the desire to be “the person in the know” still resonate with today’s young …

Makers Dominate the Entry Level Luxury MarketRead More

As an industry, we have long averted our eyes from the nasty environmental side effects of the manufacturing processes and the distribution of the things we sell. We continue with business as usual, giving a nod to sustainability as the overwhelming scale of the problem has stunned us into inertia. Our immediate business survival overrules the difficult systemic change that climate change and environmental pollution demand. But honestly, how can any of us sidestep the issue (while munching on avocado toast) as we operate in a period of …

One Step Closer to CircularityRead More

Let’s talk context. The origins of luxury goods go back to the 18th century when the retail model was developed for an aristocracy – the landed gentry with money to spend. In France, Italy, Spain, and England, aristocratic wealth spawned a category of high-quality expensive goods. Jewelry and clothing were just the entry points. Look at the history of Gucci, Rolex, LVMH, Rolls Royce and you will see the clear link between money and privilege. In their brand origin stories, money had a peaches and crème complexion. First Generation …

A Perspective on Luxury from a Global CitizenRead More

My father grew up on a farm in central Iowa in the 1930s and 40s, and although life in the post-Depression heartland was pretty harsh, among his fondest memories from his childhood are those of his many horses, each one of them different shades of black. As a youngster, he had a black Shetland Pony named “Spanky.” Then in middle school came “Spot,” a black Murgese. And in his final years of high school, his father – my grandpa, who by this time was feeling a bit less worried with the worst of the Great Depression more than two decades in the …

Will 2022 be the Year of the Dark Horse in Retail?Read More