The pandemic provided select essential businesses an open field to rake in billions of consumer dollars. Shoppers moved purchases from thousands of shut-down nonessential stores, as well as a huge expenditures in travel, entertainment and other nonessential services to the essentials. And while Target was one of the beneficiaries of this dramatic windfall, they were hitting the ball out of the park even before Covid became a household term. In fact, their numbers coming out of the third quarter of 2019 showed eight straight quarters of …
Where Curbside Pickup Goes Wrong
Curbside pickup at many major retailers isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Yet this hasn’t prevented customers from using the service during Covid-19. The allure of allegedly “contact-less” shopping is more than most can resist during a pandemic. In fact, the number of orders placed online and picked up at stores surged by 208 percent in April alone. But many retailers initially had to scramble to implement curbside pickup while being simultaneously understaffed, underfunded, and under inventoried; and this led to many a catastrophic pickup …
The In-Store Dining Experience: At Risk
Much has been written about the gradual demise of the golden era of department stores. With the growing monopoly of e-commerce and the added catalyst of a pandemic, the future of brick-and-mortar stores looks beyond grim. Much has also been written about the pandemic’s other victim, the restaurant industry, similarly suffering a blow that it may never recover from. But no one is talking about the retailer-eatery union, the long legacy of restaurants nestled inside department stores, a symbiotic relationship that was envisioned as contributing …
JC Penney: Too Big to Fail
I'm no Andrew Sorkin, who given the chance, could probably make another blockbuster book, Too Big to Fail: JCP the Sequel. However, he would probably have to give the story a massive spin. While the notion of "too big to fail" might peak interest in the retail world, it most certainly doesn't contain the kind of drama, suspense, the edge of crisis and sheer magnitude of a potential economic collapse of Great Depression proportions, as Sorkin was able to brilliantly narrate in his famous book. So, I will take a shot with a mere article-sized …
How Sustainability Went from Just Slogan to Reality in Home Furnishings Retailing
If you mentioned the word "sustainability" to anybody in the home furnishings business a few years back -- hell, maybe even a few months back -- chances are you'd get a smirk, an "oh-yeah-that's-important" condescending response and a suggestion that it was time to go to Starbucks. My, how things have changed. Profits + the Planet As the entire consumer products industry from factories and marketers to retailers comes to grips with the issue of environmental dangers lurking in the very near-term future, the home furnishings industry is …
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What to Do About Gen Z’s Consumer Power
Generation Z never did what marketers told them to. This is especially true when it comes to where they spend their hard-earned cash during a global economic meltdown. Gen Z consumers are still the largest consumer demographic, falling between the ages of 7 and 22 and controlling 143 billion in spending power pre coronavirus. However, the members of Gen Z that are still making money during the pandemic are bifurcated into those that have been consistently spending online, and those that are holding off in hopes of eventually spending what …
Are Department Stores Getting the Wake-Up Call on Inventory Management?
Amid a disastrous second quarter for department stores (and most apparel retailers, for that matter), one company stood out: Dillard's. Dillard's didn't exactly have a great quarter. Retail sales declined 35 percent year over year, and the company posted a net loss of $8.6 million. However, that was actually a smaller loss than what Dillard's reported for the comparable period in 2019. (The second fiscal quarter tends to be a seasonally weak period for the company.) Aggressive inventory management actions were the reason why Dillard's …
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Fashion Moves Out of This World
The pandemic continues to unravel both our social lives and social fabric, but changes are not limited to the corporeal; our social media lives are changing too. Gaming has become global, communal and interactive. An August 2020 eMarketer survey pegs the number of digital gamers in the United States at 174.7 million or 52.5 percent of the population. Amazon just introduced a gaming platform called Luna which will stream more than 100 popular video games and will integrate with Amazon-owned Twitch, the live-stream gaming platform. Stastia breaks …