QVC managed to hook the baby boom generation 35 years ago to buy things on TV. It became the birth of “retailtainment” and proved to be highly addicting. Now, three and a half decades later, millennial’s and Gen Z are going down a digital rabbit hole with livestream shopping; some are calling it Next Gen Commerce. China’s Alibaba pioneered livestream selling as a marketing tool five years ago, and its growth has been ginormous, even by Alibaba standards. Livestream selling accounted for 10 percent of the $1.5 trillion spent on Chinese …
Spinning Around
Remember when we (along with me and every other financial exec in department store land) all sold our receivables portfolios? I studied that every year for about 20 years (literally) when I was an executive at the May Department Stores Company (May Co.) before we finally made the move. We knew it would never actually improve the operating company to get rid of the receivables portfolio, but we were finally offered deals so good on the valuation of the portfolio and finally negotiated to the point that the operating disadvantage was manageable. …
Will 2022 be the Year of the Dark Horse in Retail?
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 …
Hubert Joly: The Unlikely Retailer
Who is the executive who fixed a retailer that just about everybody thought was unfixable? One who quotes both The Godfather and Camus with equal authority? Someone who was a most unlikely candidate for the job that has now come to define his career. And a person who sees the magic in both people and companies. To understand Hubert Joly, the former CEO of Best Buy and now a best-selling author and Harvard Business School professor, you need to understand all of the above dynamics -- but that only gets you started. French born and educated, …
Get Tough, or Get Out
As I have often said to many of my friendly colleagues, many of whom are C-suite leaders in the retail industry, I’m fortunate that I only must observe, strategize, and write about the industry for The Robin Report. And indeed, some former CEO’s who are in retirement yet want to remain relevant are saying the same thing. They are obviously more attuned to the toughness required of the current C-leaders. Like aging Woodstock attendees can say, “I was there” (and my generation knows what they are referring to), so too will current C-suite leaders …
Power Plays
We’ve heard it, seen it, and are experiencing it as a customer or retail management. The employee is calling the shots. There’s a great power shift that’s giving employees the upper hand. Workers are leveraging their power to choose employers that meet their needs – professionally and personally. Which means it’s a buyer’s market when it comes to employment options. This should put retail management on alert. The old rules don’t apply anymore, and if you’re asleep at the wheel you’re going to miss out on top talent that can make or break your …
Reimagining the Supermarket
Note: The following has been excerpted from “How We Eat, the Brave New World of Food and Drink.” Copyright © 2022 by Peckshee, LLC. All good businesses gaze into their crystal ball in an attempt to arrive at the future an hour or two before everyone else. In Italy, “The Supermarket of the Future” has existed for some time. It was the name of a project that the design firm Carlo Ratti Associati created in 2015 for the Milan World Expo. The experimental store was part of a “future food district pavilion” sponsored by Coop Italia, the country’s …
Unified Commerce = Managing the Customer Experience
Like many retail phrases and terms, unified commerce has been lumped in with multi-channel and omnichannel simply as a means of selling across platforms and locations. While this may be true, it is certainly not the full vision of what it means to be unified. Unified Theory So, what exactly is unified commerce? In a nutshell, it’s a systematic practice of having a single view of the customer. That seems essential to fulfill personalization and customized experiences for demanding customers who expect this as table stakes. Today, …
Unified Commerce = Managing the Customer ExperienceRead More