The holiday season is often a make-or-break sales period for many companies, large and small, especially those in retail, travel, and hospitality industries. With inflation fears and global unrest, there are many unknowns this year that may influence consumer optimism and actual spending. To help with scenario planning, a Holiday Spending Forecast, produced by Commerce Signals, uses a permission and anonymized view of consumer spending that includes both Visa and Mastercard, credit and debit for 40 million households. Comprehensive …
The Boomers Aren’t Quite Done…Well, Booming
I am of course not exactly objective about this topic, but when a major new research report confirms it, that’s a big deal. Baby boomers, it turns out, aren’t quite done making their mark on good old conspicuous consumption. Turns out we – yes, I’m one of them – may in fact be the best demographic out there when it comes to consumer spending. And those businesses – retailers and vendors alike – that ignore this do so at their own peril. This is not to say millennials and Gen Zers don’t have money to spend in their acquisitional life stage. …
The Pre-Black Friday Phenomenon
Here’s the trendline: A significant shift in Pre-Black Friday sales has occurred over the past several years as retailers move from a cascade of big one-day promotions to deals that “drip” over a longer time period. Pre-Black Friday in the Rear View Mirror When you look back to 2017, the Black Friday event looks primitive by today’s standards. Retailers provided ad previews a few days before Black Friday and encouraged consumers to come into the store the evening of Thanksgiving Day to get first dibs on discounts. It seems quaint now but …
Carhartt and Red Wing: Everything Old Is New Again
For many next-gen consumers, the term “trusted brand” seems like an oxymoron. The combined 140 million Gen Y (aka millennial) and Gen Z cohorts are responsible for a combined $165 billion in annual U.S. sales. Yet they influence a staggering $350 billion in annual purchasing. Plus, they share a mutual distrust of self-aggrandizing brands, unless they meet their own next-gen litmus tests. Two of my Robin Report colleagues recently highlighted this very point. Jasmine Glasheen states “Gen Z shops with retailers for their value, and shops with …
How an Iconic Parisian Café Plans to Conquer the Retail World
Perhaps if you started business in 1885 and have a formidable literary and artist legacy going back nearly two centuries with the same family running the show -- and have created an institution over all those years in an achingly desirable and historic corner in Paris -- then taking things slowly comes naturally. But now the restaurant and grande dame café, Les Deux Magots, has worldwide ambitions and has begun to spread its international wings. The plan is to grow slowly and support its Parisian chic flagship while rolling out a new café …
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What The Taylor Swift Effect Tells Us About Branding
“The T Swift Effect” aka “The Taylor Effect” sounds like a seismic happening. If Taylor Swift has ever held a concert in your town, or if you have a Swiftie in your family, you already know that “seismic happening” is an understatement. “The T Swift Effect” refers to the economic boost in cities where Taylor Swift holds concerts, as well as the significant sales spike of any event or product with which T Swift is peripherally associated. T Swift’s Impact on Peripheral Sales Taylor Swift could give King Midas a run for his money because …
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How Cotton Can Help Protect the Planet
Unlike synthetic, petroleum-based textiles like polyester, nylon and acrylic, which produce microplastic pollution and can take hundreds of years to decompose, cotton biodegrades quickly, something the International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC) points out. It calls cotton “a natural fiber like no other,” one of the reasons being that its use decreases the number of plastics entering the planet’s waterways and helps to keep oceans clean. World Cotton Day, celebrated in early October, is meant to both honor the natural fiber as well as …
Amazon Dumps Yet Another Failed Brick-and-Mortar Experiment
Here’s a glimpse of a strategic disaster. I gave Amazon CEO, Andy Jassy, kudos as he took the top job as, in my opinion, Amazon was slipping into maturity. I said the meteoric ecommerce frontrunner needed a level-headed business professional to turn the growth strategy from the “get big fast” culture created by its brilliant founder to a more sustainable and profitable forward arc before it might tip into the abyss. One of the big failings of entrepreneurs like Bezos is that they don’t know when to let go of their breakthrough innovations. …
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