In-Store Technology
February 28, 2020 at 3:06 pm
A recent article in The New York Times looked at life in retail during the recent holiday selling season. It centered on a busy Manhattan store of a big, well-regarded apparel chain and one of its merchandising managers. I wasn’t surprised to read the retailer equipped employees with several apps to expedite sales and keep…
February 18, 2020 at 11:37 am
Across hotel lobbies and restaurants to retail shops and corporate offices, interactive devices are increasingly available for people to use. Trips to the local supermarket include self-checkout options, while technology in a retail showroom can showcase products that aren't physically in-store. And in the quick-serve restaurant industry, we see heavy hitters like McDonald’s and Taco…
February 18, 2020 at 10:24 am
Brick-and-mortar retail has a long and prosperous future ahead. Despite popular misconceptions about online stores and drone deliveries, people still need real stores in their lives — and will for decades to come. Research from Escalent found that despite the impressive growth of e-commerce, in-store sales still dwarf online sales ($152.7 billion vs. $62.5 billion).…
January 22, 2020 at 3:18 pm
The merging of physical and digital has made retail customers more demanding than ever. What do customers want? They want everything … and they want it now. They want the excitement only physical retail can deliver. As Neiman Marcus CEO Geoffroy van Raemdonck told Forbes about its new store at Manhattan’s Hudson Yards, it’s not…
January 16, 2020 at 9:51 am
The dust has settled following the “retail apocalypse” of 2018, and the numbers reveal that retail’s radical transformation is more nuanced than we once thought. While headlines in early 2019 spelled the end of retail, data from IHL Group shows otherwise. In 2019, retailers announced 2,965 more store openings than closings. Certain retailers led the…
January 15, 2020 at 10:57 am
More than 8,200 retail stores closed in 2019. Well-known brands like Forever 21, Radio Shack, and Barneys New York declared bankruptcy as consumers continued to move away from physical stores in favor of online shopping or more specialized experiences. Whether they’re looking at a product in person or on their mobile device, consumers now expect…
January 15, 2020 at 9:36 am
The notion that millennials are harbingers of the retail apocalypse is, in fact, a myth. New data from Accenture quashes this misconception, having found 82 percent of millennials prefer shopping in brick-and-mortar stores. The fact that millennials haven’t simply abandoned brick-and-mortar retail in favor of online shopping is a testament to the power of a smart, unified…
January 14, 2020 at 12:35 pm
Yesterday at the 2020 National Retail Federation Big Show in New York City, Total Retail's Joe Keenan sat down for an interview with Jennifer Williams, vice president, retail services at Perry Ellis International. Williams discusses Perry Ellis' Life Ready application, its initial rollout in wholesale partner Dillard's stores over the past year, and the brand's partnerships with…
December 16, 2019 at 10:59 am
As director of market research at the Consumer Technology Association (CTA)®, I have an insider’s view of the latest and greatest innovations and technology. And there’s an important, but unexpected, trend in the intersection of technology and retail: tech innovations are giving shoppers even more reasons to visit brick-and-mortar stores. Ninety percent of consumer shopping still…
December 9, 2019 at 12:35 pm
I’ve long been a proponent of making omnichannel a C-suite issue. It has to come from the top down. But the brands struggling to deliver a true omnichannel experience have a fundamental issue. At an organizational level, many brands still operate online and in-store in silos. E-commerce and physical retail are their own separate entities,…
