Recently the CEO of a think tank heralded the outcomes of the Glasgow Summit “The roadmap and momentum are there; so, the big issue is now acceleration.” While another observer pinpointed the shortage of money needed to effectively meet the challenges of global warming. The money is not only needed to offset the damages and growing threats to smaller nations, but also to fund new enterprises and innovations which to date have been largely focused on mitigation. Both observers have rightly targeted the critical issues. What’s next is identifying …
Retail in a Transitional Crisis
A few years ago I worked with Godiva Chocolatiers on a new loyalty initiative to take it beyond spontaneous purchases and holiday whirlwinds at its tiny shops. The most remarkable piece of learning came from a conversation with the president of the company. The week before Christmas was an “all-hands-on-deck” time for them, when he told me every senior executive throughout the Godiva world would go to work in the stores over the holidays. They would run the cash registers, work with clients to create the perfect holiday gift and bring fresh …
Is Sonia Syngal Gap’s Fourth “Hail Mary?”
Mickey Drexler left the helm of Gap in 2002, after he had guided it through almost two decades of meteoric growth from $480 million in revenues upon his arrival in 1983, to almost $14 billion in 2000 (including his launch of Old Navy and Banana Republic) — an amazing 2,400 percent increase. In contrast, its revenues over the last two decades have grown to a paltry $16.5 billion in 2019. And roughly $1 billion of that increase was generated by Old Navy under its CEO from 2016 to 2019, Sonya Syngal, which likely earned her the appointment to the …
The Joe Behind Trader Joe’s
In the entire world of retailing perhaps there is no single operation that breaks more rules, defies more standard practices and is so successful as Trader Joe’s, the grocery chain founded by Joe Coulombe … and now 500 stores strong. Coulombe, who sold the company to the big German retailer Aldi Nord in 1979, died earlier this year at age 89, but not before he had written “Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys,” a combination autobiography and business guide whose title pretty much sums up the company’s …
Why Amazon Has a Hold on Millennials
Since its inception, Jeff Bezos has been playing the long game at Amazon. He put everyone on notice in his first shareholder letter in 1997: “We believe that a fundamental measure of our success will be shareholder value we create over the long term. We choose to prioritize growth.” Profits took a back seat to growth and early on he took a lot of flak about it, as when Forrester Research analyst George Colony called the company “Amazon. Toast.” The winning strategy as laid out in that first letter and followed ever since is “customer …
Ulta and Sephora Break into the Big Boxes
America’s beauty queens, Ulta and Sephora, have been going head-to-head in the U.S. market since Ulta launched in 1990, and Sephora opened its first store in SoHo in 1998, and online in 1999. Today the LVMH owned Sephora boasts 2,700 stores worldwide and expects to reach over 712 stores in the U.S. this year with its recent alliance with Kohl’s to create 200 shop-in-shop locations within its stores. By comparison, Ulta has 1,301 U.S. stores. Plans call for 1,500 to 1,700, new stores, including the opening of a projected one hundred …
What Do Circuit City and Best Buy Have in Common?
How ironic it would be if the same decisions that drove Circuit City into extinction ultimately will do the same to Best Buy? Circuit City was a poster child for customer service, until it wasn’t. They cut costs by minimalizing full-time, well-trained associates and mixed in more part-time workers (of course there were other reasons as well). When Hubert Joly took the helm of a very shaky Best Buy in 2012, he did just the opposite to turn BB around. Flanked by three fierce competitors, Walmart, Target, and Amazon, all offering convenience and …
Auto Checkout: Oops, They Let Amazon Do It Again
You would think they would have learned their lesson. After giving Amazon a 10-year (really closer to 15 when you come right down to it) head start in the ecommerce business and then failing to understand how important both the Prime program and free shipping were to the success of buying online, traditional retailers are once again losing out to Amazon’s enormous advantage when it comes to automatic checkout stores that use AI technology. Closing in on three decades since Jeff Bezos sold his first book out of a local warehouse, the rest …