June 11, 2021  D2C is the new darling of retail consultants. But it’s tricky and risky for traditional retailers with multiple vendors to play in this popular sandbox. It takes time, resources, and money to build out a sustainable D2C model. Key point: D2C is no panacea for struggling retailers. Listen in to Robin Lewis and Shelley E. Kohan, TRR’s chief strategist, as they delve into the opportunities and complexities of going direct.

June 4, 2021 All dressed up and nowhere to go? That sentiment will become a dim memory of the past pandemic. When it’s safe people want to #1 see family and friends, #2 go on vacation #3 go out to dinners/bars. These are great indicators for the apparel segment. Join Robin Lewis, Shelley E. Kohan, TRR’s chief strategist and special guest Kim Kitchings, Senior Vice President, Consumer Marketing for Cotton Inc. as they delve into recent consumer research that reveals good news for the retail sector. For additional information, visit Cotton Inc.  and check out this Covid-19 Consumer Concerns at-a-glance.

May 28, 2021 Your social network is expanding to personal shopping: social commerce will exceed $62B by 2024. The biggest players are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and Snapchat, but don’t count out brands developing their own platforms – just look at what Nike and Sephora are doing. And retailers, you’re on notice: social commerce is a more engaging, personalized, and immediate online shopping experience. Listen to Robin Lewis and Shelley E. Kohan as they look into social commerce and its challenge to the online retail status quo.

May 21, 2021 Customers don’t want a flat journey that shows the same products in the same order to everyone. They want an inspirational, personalized experience that is completely relevant to them. How do retailers deliver a valuable, emotional online experience? Listen in as Robin Lewis and Shelley E. Kohan, TRR chief strategist, have a wide-ranging conversation with entrepreneur Sarah McVittie, co-founder of Dressipi, as they discuss how innovative tech solutions fused with empathy are changing the customer experience and retailers’ bottom lines.

May 14, 2021 Is Walmart Amazon’s headache? Or the opposite? Time is our currency in a digital marketplace, and the race is on for Amazon to become dominant in the physical space or Walmart to dominate the online space. If you play by the numbers, Amazon’s total revenue is projected to hit $660 billion by 2024 and Walmart will clock in at $630 billion. Listen in as Robin Lewis and Shelley E. Kohan, TRR’s chief strategist, debate the battle of the titans as both Amazon and Walmart build out their portfolios with third-party brands and a cascade of services as they face off dominating the future of retail.

May 7, 2021 It’s almost opening night for America, a tangible signal that happy days are here again with economic growth for nonessential retail finally in sight. But if New York City is the standard-bearer for post-pandemic optimism, we might be jumping the gun. Listen in as Robin Lewis and Shelley E. Kohan, TRR’s chief strategist, go in-depth on how in-store retail is going to move forward. A few of the issues: languishing customer Covid anxiety; pent-up demand for self-reward; the return-to-work need for updated wardrobes, from the waist down; consumer expectations for in-store experiences that matter – all complicated by inventory and supply chain chaos after 14 months of various stages of lockdown. Listen and learn!

April 29, 2021 It only took 10 years to rewrite retail history. In the past decade, retailing has been in full-scale deconstruction propelled by technology, consumer behaviors and the new rules of a digital marketplace. What will the next decade reveal? Retail engineers will run the business in tandem with chief experience experts who fuse the art and science of commerce transforming the transaction into a personal relationship. Listen in to Robin Lewis and Shelley E. Kohan, TRR’s chief strategist, as they discuss how the last ten years has reset the past 200 years of retail.

April 22, 2021 How do you redefine the retail store for a post-pandemic marketplace? How about a shared services platform that raises the bar on one-stop shopping? Add to that a membership program with a host of rewards, and you’ve built a loyalty model that customers can’t resist. Listen in as Robin Lewis and Shelley E. Kohan, TRR chief strategist, explore the next generation of retail services and why they are more important than ever to serve customers who demand convenience and curation

April 15, 2021 Welcome to the Roaring Twenties. Pent-up demand for self-reward, stimulus checks, pumped-up savings and rock-bottom interest rates will feed a spending frenzy. Are pricing power and inflation lurking? Not a chance! What we really need to pay attention to is the evolving devaluation of retail as we race to the bottom with endless promotions to get rid of senseless oversupply, perpetuated for over half a century, and now dumped into an incredible proliferation of off-price and dollar stores. Listen and learn from Robin Lewis and Shelley E. Kohan, TRR chief strategist.

April 8, 2021 Is Amazon following a rational, actionable physical store strategy? Or is it practicing a hit or miss scattershot approach to expanding its physical presence to a predicted 3600 store count? Listen to Robin Lewis and Shelley E. Kohan, chief strategist for TRR, as they debate Amazon’s future. Is Amazon actually in stealth mode to engineer another significant market disruption? Listen and learn!

April 1, 2021 How many retailers understand the profitable balance between owned-inventory and vendor-owned inventory? Collaborative partnerships create an endless aisle of choice for consumers and a sustainable solution for retailers to shrink their inventories. Collaborative Partnerships are the wave of the future and the high-performance retailer today operates as an openly shared distribution platform. Listen to Robin Lewis and Shelley E. Kohan, chief strategist for TRR as they delve into why new partnership models are replacing the antiquated wholesale-to-retail model.

March 25, 2021 What is Richard Baker thinking? It goes against all omnichannel reasoning to break Saks into separate divisions – except to claw profits out of each, which will ultimately make Saks another real estate play. Just look at what happened to Lord & Taylor. Listen to Robin Lewis and Shelley E. Kohan, chief strategy officer of TRR, as they deconstruct what’s happening to Saks and how it may play out as it moves backward, away from its core customer.

March 18, 2021 Take a look at what’s happening at Kohl’s. Many activists make their move out of short-term greed and take down brands for short-term profit. Their goal? Replace current board members with activists’ picks (Note: many bored, retired executives who want to get back in the game). The new activist-controlled board drives short-term financial engineering to yield a quick bump up in stock price. Then? They cash out. What’s a CEO with a solid long-term strategic plan to do? Robin Lewis and Shelley E. Kohan, chief strategy officer of TRR, look into how activist pirates can break the C-suite spirit and break a brand.

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