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Re-Gapping The Gap…Millennials in The Cross-Hairs
The “numbers” are all heading in a positive direction following a decade of collapse. The “street” has a buy recommendation on its stock. A little “buzz” is being heard. Are we being fooled once again...
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Getting a Return on Post-Holiday Returns
As a merchant, you’ve watched holiday shopping seasons come and go, and you’re well aware that in the last few years, consumer spending behavior has been through radical changes. It’s been a slow...
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Well-Wrapped at Retail: Savvy Consumers Meet Smart Retailing This Holiday
Consumers may be wary this holiday season, but there are bright spots ahead. According to the National Retail Federation, overall holiday spending is projected to increase 4.1% this year, from $563...
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A Toys Story
There’s a certain irony in the fact that the world’s very first category killer was also the first of its big-box ilk to be severely challenged and nearly decimated by the even bigger-box mass...
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Are Apparel Retailers Shooting Themselves in the Footprint?
The Shift To E-Commerce May Be Too Much, Too Soon On a recent afternoon I spent 20 minutes doing errands that a year or two ago would have taken me about eight hours to do. Instead of jumping into my...
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He’s Got It: Menswear in the Information Age
In my last article we gave you three shops that were bellwethers of an emerging trend: a bottom-up trickle effect that has innovative brands skewing small. Here are three more bellwether retail stores...
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How Can You Get There if You Can’t See It?
Click to Enlarge What performance measures and goal-setting metrics are you currently using? How do you know they accurately reflect individual store performance? Are they helping to create a...
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Tesco Felled By Hubris, Leaves USA
Quitting the country is the easy part. Now, what about all that infrastructure? Chronicle of a Failure Foretold Years from now, MBA students will be puzzling over how Tesco, the British food retailer,...
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Sam & Sandy
Sam is Palestinian with family in Ramallah. He has lived in the USA for more than 25 years. He and his cousin run a small convenience store on West Fourth Street in the middle of New York’s...
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Nordstrom: Ghost of Vince Lombardi Lives On
With Some 65,000 Quarterbacks I wrote an article in 2004 in which I compared Nordstrom with the Green Bay Packers at their peak between 1958 and 1968 under coach Vince Lombardi. Guess what? Lombardi’s...
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How Trader Joe’s Lures Shoppers With Quirky Products and Brands
Trader Joe’s is undoubtedly the nation’s most successful limited-assortment grocery chain; lines actually go around the block in New York City’s two outposts during the holidays. So what’s really going...
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Hey Computer! How Do I Really Look?
“Hi Renee. The tank top you bought last time is on sale. You should check them out,” says the holographic image of a perky sales associate as she walks into the store. As she tries one on, another...
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Community Retail at Scale
It’s Not Just Good, It’s Good For Business No one can argue with the benefits of scale when it comes to retail. Large-scale retailers provide deeper assortments at lower prices than their ma-and-pa...
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Musings on the Future of Retailing
The day will soon come for mass merchants where checkout counters will be eliminated. Once RFID is fully implemented, the customer will be able to push the shopping cart through an RFID reader station,...
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Bay Closes the Talent Gap
With the launch of the Spring 2014 lookbook in April, Gap Creative Director Rebekka Bay sets the tone of her six-month-old stewardship as Creative Director of Gap, Inc. For those of you who aren’t yet...
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Retailers Use Technology to Get a Leg Up With Customers
Today, there is a seismic shift in consumer behavior affecting the retail world—and it’s being driven by technology. Likewise, retailers’ success hinges on an organizational ability to quickly adapt...
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Selling Luxury: Going Beyond In-Store Experiences to Inner Experience
Luxury Retailers Alert: The Aspirant Shopper Is Back, and Ready for School. Five years ago, the luxury sector took a nasty hit.The prevailing message at the onset of the Great Recession to...
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What’s Up With Social Shopping?
Social Shopping is not a brand-new concept, but the term defines a set of phenomena that have been occurring for several years now. At its essence, social shopping has been focused on ecommerce to a...
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Are You Sure You’re Safe?
For decades, police and law enforcement agencies across the country have adopted the Motto “To Protect and Serve.” In light of recent events–bombings in Boston, shootings in Newtown and the...
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A Luxury Market Update
In early May, I attended the Luxury Roundtable: State of Luxury 2013 in New York, organized and hosted by The Luxury Daily and its editor-in-chief Mickey Alam Khan. It featured speakers from the Four...
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