Merchandising

Retailers (or any marketer or publisher) seeking higher conversion rates must adopt an “innovation attitude” to guide them amid a fertile landscape for new ideas, advanced technology and customer behavior learnings. So advised speaker after speaker at last week's Shop.org Merchandise Summit in Huntington Beach, Calif.

Forever 21, a clothing chain that attracts many under-21 customers with its inexpensive, trendy fashions, is being questioned about its motives in choosing a select group of states to carry its recently launched maternity line. The line, called Love 21 Maternity, is currently available in Arizona, Alaska, California, Utah and Texas.

Walmart's strategy is evolving, and would have evolved regardless of what managers are in place. "Taking merchandise out of the Action Alley and providing clear sight lines has been a successful strategy," Spokesman David Tovar said in an e-mail, but added, "We are constantly listening to our customers and some have told us they liked seeing the rollbacks on merchandise in the aisles. .... We have given more autonomy to our store managers to make the decisions on what is right for their customers."

To “live curious” as a merchant means to dig deeper, pay more attention to details and patiently sift through the mundane to find the remarkable. And sometimes it means making the mundane simply remarkable.

A host of retailers are stretching their brands into uncharted product categories and into new lines of business. With store expansion on the back burner, retailers are turning to fresh avenues for growth, betting that their brand equity will carry over to new product categories.

Clothing maker Perry Ellis International sees a 10 percent rise in industrywide apparel prices over the next two years amid rising commodity prices and higher labor costs in China. "Prices have to go up at some point. The American consumer will have to pay higher prices... It's only apparel and electronics, the items that keep coming down, everything else in life has come up," Chief Executive George Feldenkreis told the Reuters Consumer and Retail Summit in New York.

Upon learning of shotfarm, a free, centralized digital asset exchange service that allows retailers and manufacturers to quickly and securely share product images and information, Schwake immediately joined hoping both his company and his partners could reap the benefits of free, centralized product image management.

Stop and ask yourself: Do your merchants think of themselves as servants? That is, do they come to work each day thinking about how they can create products that make your customers’ lives better in some way?

It turns out that consumers don’t necessarily buy more merchandise just because you offer them more merchandise. Consumers tend to have a “budget,” if you will. In other words, customers are only capable of spending so much on any family of merchandise categories, regardless of how many items or SKUs you choose to offer.

Victoria's Secret anticipates its inventory levels will be down in the low- to mid-single digits this quarter, and plans to throttle back on its discounting-based promotional activity, as it won’t need to clear merchandise out. As a result, the direct aspect of the company’s semiannual sale will be shortened by five days. Its retail element will not be affected during the semiannual sale, but its Memorial Day sale will be shorter and smaller. This doesn’t mean the company is pulling back on promotions, period. In fact, it's publishing a new catalog exclusively focusing on the Victoria’s Secret Pink line, which will be published to take advantage of back-to-school shopping.