What a difference a year makes. At this time last year, consumers were hesitant to spend on much besides essentials and products that would make their life at home more comfortable. They were fearful about going into stores, many of which were temporarily closed due to the pandemic anyway, worried about how COVID-19 would affect…
Welcome to this week's Retail Resources, which features a curated list of the best content and resources that I hope will help you navigate through the coronavirus pandemic. This week I offer information and resources about business strategies, wellness tips, and personal finance information. If there's anything you would like me to share in a…
The novel coronavirus and the precautions governments and individuals are taking to protect themselves from infection have already had a powerful impact on the global economy. Those impacts are likely to extend well into this year, possibly even into the fourth-quarter holiday shopping period. Between disruptions to manufacturing and supply chains and shifts in consumer…
The impact of COVID-19 has been felt throughout supply chains worldwide. With much production impacted, and facing an uncertain future, many retailers are wondering how to manage existing inventory in the short and long term. For retailers with longer seasonal lead times, spring and summer inventory is likely already in stock, or at least secured.…
Steve Jobs thrived at balancing the complexity that drives powerful computational systems with the simplicity required for utility. “Simple can be harder than complex,” Jobs said. “You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move…
Supposedly, Tori Spelling once said, “bad shopping habits die hard.” The "Beverly Hills 90210" actress was probably talking about her own shopping habits, but in a larger sense, Spelling, who helped personify consumerism in the 1990s, when the mall was king and Amazon.com was merely another dot-com, pretty much nailed today’s retail business, where bad habits…
The retail industry is facing an epidemic. As retailers continue to use markdowns to entice shoppers and drive traffic into stores, consumers are becoming increasingly price sensitive, leading them to expect sales at every turn. A recent study by First Insight took a deeper dive into the expectations of consumers, finding that 70 percent need…
It’s among the most frustrating parts of retailing: You built a strong assortment plan. Great product mix. Good margin. Customer response is better than you had hoped for. You're ready for an outstanding selling season. Yet the allocation process drops the ball. Too many large dresses in store A while the racks are empty in…
As I go through the discovery process with prospective SPI customers, there's a moment in almost every engagement when one of the planners or allocators shows their current multitab, multidimension, multipivot table, holographic (OK, I exaggerated on the last point) homegrown Excel spreadsheet. It always impresses. I'm genuinely in awe of the complex usage of…
It’s been a rough year for retail. The department store model has derailed into irrelevance, traditional brick-and-mortar stores have had to make massive investments in e-commerce, and customers’ needs have continued to change at breakneck speed. Despite some surprising (and some not so surprising) developments across the industry, the majority of retailers are looking forward…
