Shelley E. Kohan (00:02.101)
Hi everyone, thanks for joining our weekly podcast. I’m Shelley Cohan and I am thrilled and excited to welcome back again, Mark Cohen, who is the former director of retail studies at Columbia Business School. One of our esteemed writers at the ROM Report, not to mention your multitude of years of service in our industry, welcome.

Mark Cohen (00:24.142)
Thank you.

Shelley E. Kohan (00:26.059)
It’s always a pleasure having you on. We have a whole kind of what I would call a modge podge of topics today. We’re gonna talk about vendor relationships, really hot topic right now. RTO, which earned its own acronym, Return to Office. So that’ll be a fun conversation. That’s really heating up for fall. We’ll talk a little bit about the customer service and what it really takes to deliver consistent service. And maybe at the end, I can ask you to…

give us your view on holiday 2025. I haven’t seen many predictions come out, but love to get your view maybe at the end of our podcast. So let’s jump right into our first topic. last time you were on Retail Unwrapped, Mark, we talked a lot about sacks and one of the issues that came up was the payment of the vendors. And we talked kind of about how that was just a problem for the vendors. It’s a problem for the consumer, et cetera. So.

I’m going to broaden that conversation and ask you to talk a little bit about vendor abuse and what that looks like and why is that an issue in our industry today.

Mark Cohen (01:33.454)
Okay, vendor abuse which you and I both witnessed repeatedly as practiced by the May Company’s federated Macy’s and now of course, Saks Global, occurs when a distribution organization and a payables organization become profit centers. I’ll tell you a very fast story which should answer the question of who pays for vendor abuse. I’m up in Canada as Sears Canada’s CEO. A fellow called me.

to say hello who had worked for me as a divisional merchandise manager at Lazarus and then as a general merchandise manager at Sears Roebuck in Chicago. And he was lamenting the fact that his company, a private label costume jewelry company was losing money and as president he was in the hot seat and he was going crazy trying to figure out how to solve his problem. And I said, Bill, what’s the problem? He said, well, my biggest account.

which I believe then was May Company, is basically dunning me 5 to 7 % every time we ship the many goods. The label’s in the wrong side of the box, they claim a shortage, which I know is bogus because he personally packed some of the cartons, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. He said, I just can’t get through to them. Phone calls, lawyers’ letters, nothing seems to result in a solution. We’re basically getting killed.

Shelley E. Kohan (02:41.823)
Mark Cohen (03:02.635)
And I said, well, Bill, shame on you. There’s a very simple solution. I’m surprised you haven’t arrived on it. And he said, well, if you can share the solution, I will buy you a car. And I said, you don’t have to buy me a car, but here’s the solution. Just raise your prices 7 to 10%. Don’t do it out loud. Don’t publicize it. Don’t describe it out loud. Just do it. Do it slowly.

embed in your price list a countervailing increase in cost to be borne by your client who basically is going to have to pass it along to the customer. And he said, well, can it be that simple? And I said, just do it. Anyway, three or four months later, he called and asked me what color car I wanted. At the end of the day, it’s a burden on the cost of goods sold.

Shelley E. Kohan (03:58.827)
Yeah.

Mark Cohen (04:01.503)
It’s an artificial burden, it’s an arbitrary burden, and the consumer at the end of it all pays the price.

Shelley E. Kohan (04:10.643)
It’s so true and I remember I actually was in charge of charge backs at Macy’s for a period of time. Remember Macy’s West back in the day when it was its own division. And so one of the things we did was charge back vendors for exactly non-compliance of price tickets, hangers, excessive packaging, et cetera, et cetera, which is fine if you have a clear standard and it’s upfront and the vendors have it. It becomes problematic when…

Mark Cohen (04:19.639)
Yes.

Shelley E. Kohan (04:38.175)
you become excessive with it, one, so you’re charging for things that aren’t there, like the person that contacted you. And the other thing that becomes problematic in terms of the chargebacks is it creates animosity between the retailer and the vendor. And if the retailer doesn’t fix it, so say for example, you charge it back for not ticketing correctly, but then the retailer never did ticket it correctly,

then you’re charging them for labor that you didn’t incur. So it can get very messy in terms of the charge backs for sure.

Mark Cohen (05:11.703)
Well, the ultimate vendor abuser today is course, Sachs Global, which has the audacity to not actually pay for the merchandise it receives and then promise that it will pay and from what we’ve read, fail to honor that promise. So I don’t know where this is going, but to say they can’t stay in business if they continue to behave this way.

Shelley E. Kohan (05:36.607)
I remember Mark, that’s on top. I don’t know if you remember this, but I’m gonna say in the early 2000s, I don’t have the specific year, it was after I had left Saks, but Saks got in big trouble for chargebacks. I don’t know if you remember that, but there was a huge issue where vendors kind of went after Saks for these kind of falsified chargebacks. So you layer that on top of what’s happening now, and you have to wonder what that vendor relationship is looking like.

over time. I don’t know if have they ever really treated their vendors well.

Mark Cohen (06:11.041)
likely not and of course it becomes an enormous sauce source of fraud fraud which is occurred here in the united states there was a scandal at tesco in the u k involving among other things chargeback behavior so it is what it is it’s it’s it’s an indication of poor management and lack of ethical operations

Shelley E. Kohan (06:39.235)
I think it goes back to transparency too. There has to be clear transparency. And I know now with the tariff situation that’s happening, a lot of the contracts when they were written to purchase goods just overall in retail, they didn’t really account for a substantial raise in tariffs when the goods crossed the line. So again, that’s another opportunity when you talk about vendor relations for vendors and retailers to work together to figure out how to go about.

this uptick in cost of goods at the borderline with the excessive tariffs. So it’s not, I think it’s an opportunity for vendor relations to kind of improve by working together on a problem both are facing. And you’re right, it ends up being the consumer that ends up paying for it.

Mark Cohen (07:28.269)
Well, hope for the best, expect the worst, however.

Shelley E. Kohan (07:32.305)
Right. All right. So anything else on vendor relations and

Mark Cohen (07:40.352)
I you have to dance with the one who brung you. And when you treat your counterparty as a partner, you share the crises, you share the burdens, you share the issues, and you solve them. When you treat your counterparty abusively, you pay a terrible price at some point, no doubt.

Shelley E. Kohan (07:43.913)
I love it.

Shelley E. Kohan (08:02.443)
Yeah. All right, so let’s talk about a really hot topic in the industry as we get into September, kind of the fall, I’m hearing a lot of companies mandating return to office. So a lot of companies, I think there was a 24 % increase in mandates requiring workers to go back into the office from Fortune 500 companies in Q2 of this year.

And so we have JP Morgan Chase, AT &T, Amazon, among others that are really ramping up these requirements. So Microsoft just announced that they’re considering this mandate of bringing employees back to the office. So what’s your take on mandated return to office policies?

Mark Cohen (08:47.009)
I’m all for consensus management. I’m all for leading from behind. I’ve always thought of myself as a progressive manager. The issue of where a company actually does its business, conducts its business, however, is a command and control decision, not one that would ever lend itself to a vote or to consensus management of any sort. If a CEO

and his or her board makes a determination that the health and wellbeing of their enterprise calls for everyone back at their desks in their facilities as they were pre-COVID, then it becomes a mandate. And a mandate, whether it’s said politely or harshly, politely as in, you know, here are the three paragraphs of reasons we’ve come to this conclusion.

Harshly as in Jamie Dimon telling JP Morgan Chase employees on this date you’re back at your desk or you’re fired. regardless of your style, it’s a mandate. Now you and I were probably both teaching via Zoom. I know I was in the fall of 2020 and the spring of 2021 when in the height of COVID, the world shut down.

Shelley E. Kohan (10:03.051)
Yes.

Mark Cohen (10:13.773)
colleges, universities shut down in person, businesses closed. There was no trust and faith that COVID would have a solution, that COVID wouldn’t kill everybody who contracted it. There was tremendous fear and lack of knowledge. And so we went through that period and then COVID became manageable. Columbia, thankfully, in spite of its record of inability to make.

constructive management decisions, decided that on a date certain, all classes would become in person and all faculty would appear in person to teach those classes. The consequences being, if you didn’t show up as a student, you’d be expelled. And if you didn’t show up as a faculty member, you’d be fired. Period. There was lots of sniveling and whining. A lot of students didn’t want to come back to class. They didn’t want to come back to New York.

In some cases, they didn’t want to come back to the United States. And there were quite a few faculty members that I know of who got very comfortable with Zoom and didn’t want to return to campus as well. I was delighted that the university took a stand. I’ve applauded people like Jamie Dimon without regard to his style for making a decision and making it a mandate.

And that’s what it is. Now, I’ll tell you another story. In the aftermath of COVID, I’ve had on several occasions, students in my class raised their hands and asked how I felt about remote management of businesses, to which I said, in my opinion, after 30 some odd years in retail, retail doesn’t lend itself to remote management, certainly not merchandising, marketing, et cetera, et cetera.

So in my opinion, businesses need to come back to the office. And if a business was in trouble, as for example Macy’s was, and in some regard maybe still is, time to get everybody back in their seats. And a student, several students on several occasions said, yeah, but what if your executives don’t want to do that? What if they’ve moved away from headquarters? What if they’ve really adopted this remote lifestyle?

Mark Cohen (12:38.989)
shouldn’t they be permitted to continue to which i said no if you come to the conclusion that your enterprise requires their presence and that’s it well what if they threatened to leave to which i said seah and they said well what what if your most talented people took that view to which i said get ready to replace your most talented people with other talented people who are willing to

Shelley E. Kohan (12:55.179)
I knew you were going to say that.

Mark Cohen (13:08.525)
come back to the office. And you’ll probably have to deal with some disruption, but it’s not subject to a vote. It’s not subject to petitions and entreaties and sniveling and whining. If it’s a decision that’s made with thought and care, it becomes a mandate. So you know what? The world is discovering that remote work in many fields of business

just is not optimal. It certainly wasn’t optimal in education. I I I taught for a year via Zoom. I was able to do it. Students were able to participate, but it was not, it was difficult and it was not okay. It was survivable as it tends to be, but it was not okay. And running a business, if you deem it to be important for your folks,

Shelley E. Kohan (13:47.179)
It was difficult.

Mark Cohen (14:03.853)
to be in one place or in headquarters locations is a decision you just got to make by a decree. And so I applaud those who’ve stepped up. I am dismissive of those who still are kind of playing footsie and being tentative about this.

Shelley E. Kohan (14:25.003)
I think part of the problem is I just don’t see Gen Z and Gen Alpha, by the way, Gen Alpha entered the workforce this year. I just don’t see these cohorts agreeing to these mandates. And I kind of liken it to back in the day when you and I were working the sales floor and being sales managers, I mean, I worked six days a week during many parts of the year. It was 12, 13, 14 hour days. I worked three out of four weekends.

our generations today, they’re not gonna do that. They’re just not gonna do that. So when we say we’re gonna mandate that these generations absolutely come back to work, I believe it’s going to just create this pushback and this tension between management and the workers. So I think that a hybrid four-day work or something like that, that promotes like worth balance. Remember COVID,

Coming out of COVID, that kind of really upped the game in terms of wellness and balance and gave people kind of an inner look at, know, I gotta take care of myself. And so I think because of that and because people, when they went remote at COVID, they determined that they can get work done. I think that it’s gonna be difficult to like just mandate people, but I think what’s gonna happen is just what your students said. You’re gonna lose top talent right now.

top talents going to be harder and harder to get, especially in retail, which is already a difficult field to get into and to thrive in. So I think that these, companies really have to look at their own cultures, see what’s right for them and go about this kind of return to office in a different way than just putting out these mandates. And this is really geared toward, you know, retail corporate office, not the retail store environment, obviously.

I just don’t think workers are up to getting these mandates. And I know you think that it’s not like consensus, but these new generations, they want to vote, they want to say in how the companies run, and they want to be able to be heard.

Mark Cohen (16:34.957)
Well, at the risk of being consigned as a hard case, I’m sympathetic to a point beyond which I’m not willing to go or would not be willing to go. It’s obvious why many people, not just people of a certain generation, would find it attractive to have more control of their lives. You and I both work six days a week, odd nauseam, 80 to 100 hours a week. You know, I mean,

Shelley E. Kohan (17:00.491)
Still.

Mark Cohen (17:02.861)
We were of a different generation, generational change notwithstanding, if these young folks need to be employed to live their lives, they’ll have to either put up with a mandate, if you will, or find someplace else to work which will accommodate their needs and desires. I don’t believe there’s a choice here.

in many industries and many businesses. So if you as a CEO can rationalize a hybrid model and make sure on behalf of your company that that is workable, fine. But for many businesses, retail for example, I don’t believe a hybrid model is particularly workable or optimal. And I would say to Gen Zier’s

or anyone else who’s got a problem with this, find someplace else to work. Now, I would probably take a sympathetic view at the outset, communicate a mandate out in the future, make sure there are enough desks, laptops, desktops, and parking places available. And then on that day certain, you either show up or you’re out. And that’s it.

Shelley E. Kohan (18:14.39)
Mark Cohen (18:24.781)
and the organization needs to figure out the people who aren’t going to show up and start dealing with the disruption that will inevitably create and then move on. At the end of it all, it’s not going to be up to an employee to decide how their organization is going to be.

It’s going to be organized ultimately.

Shelley E. Kohan (18:52.235)
Well, think the one kind of group of employees that are going to be really impacted, and we have a lot more sandwiched families. So we have people that are taking care of kids and older parents. And because of our change in our society and living older and et cetera, I think those families are going to have a very difficult time with the return to office mandate. So you have the, don’t want to do it, and then you have the need-based families that.

kind of need more flexibility in their work day or in whatever work policies are set forth.

Mark Cohen (19:30.828)
No doubt, it’s tough and there’s no binary solution here that works for everybody. But if you’re running a business that you fervently believe requires full participation, then your responsibility is to the business and that’s just the way it is. And more and more companies are coming to that conclusion.

some late to the party. But they’re coming to that conclusion and they’ll figure out how to make it work.

Shelley E. Kohan (20:09.257)
Yeah, so Mark, have you heard of cat coffee badging? Have you heard this new phenomenon that’s happening?

Mark Cohen (20:15.434)
No I haven’t.

Shelley E. Kohan (20:17.115)
So this is what’s So companies are putting out these mandates, return to office. So you have people that will go to the company, scan their badge in, go upstairs, say hi to everyone, grab a cup of coffee and then leave. So technically they were in the office. And it’s kind of an interesting phenomenon and there’s actually a very large percent of workers that acknowledge actually doing this behavior of coffee badging. So…

I think there were 44 % of hybrid workers in the US in a recent survey said that they’re, they just go in, they check in and they’re gone. And so what’s happening is companies are now putting together policies, restrictions, monitoring. So you have all these policies and monitoring that’s happening to track people, to make sure that they’re adhering to the schedules and they’re adhering to the mandates and all of that.

Mark Cohen (21:12.533)
You are making my case. Look, look, when teaching Zoom and looking at a screen with, you know, 60 or 70 faces, at the very outset, it became necessary to insist that everybody have their cameras on, as opposed to their photograph or picture of their cat. And then because students were able to suborn some of that, we were encouraged to cold call.

Shelley E. Kohan (21:14.443)
Ha.

Mark Cohen (21:41.612)
which I hated to do, but which made it clear that not only were you sitting in front of your laptop and attending the class, but your camera and mic were on. And so, you know, it is what it is. Look, people go to work in an office and they disappear for hours at a time. They go for a walk. They sit at their desk and they shop or they…

Shelley E. Kohan (21:48.555)
Yeah.

Shelley E. Kohan (22:04.843)
True.

Mark Cohen (22:09.569)
They get in conversations with friends as opposed to doing their work. look, I think most businesses require a structured environment. And most businesses that we read about that are coming to this conclusion are basically going to have to figure out how to hold their workforce accountable. And for all of those younger people or older people with either preferences or personal

limitations, get over it. Figure it out. Life’s a bitch, you know?

Shelley E. Kohan (22:47.259)
I think companies really have to look at not just a return to office mandate, they have to look at the whole kind of employee journey benefits package, what else they’re offering, PTO, sabbaticals. It’s all kind of a big cultural view, not just a one policy decision.

Mark Cohen (23:07.991)
Right, okay.

Shelley E. Kohan (23:10.185)
Let’s switch gears unless you want to talk more about return to office.

Mark Cohen (23:13.747)
No, no, I think we sort of agree and not, but that’s okay.

Shelley E. Kohan (23:18.443)
We can agree to disagree, right? We can make a bet five years from now how much of the work verse will be hybrid versus not. And then we can check each other in five years. That’s fun. All right, let’s talk about customer service. You think it’s expensive to deliver and expensive to fail to deliver. So let’s talk about that.

Mark Cohen (23:20.781)
That’s right.

Mark Cohen (23:29.695)
deal.

Mark Cohen (23:40.354)
You know, if you were to ask a thousand retail executives, senior executives, CEOs, or a thousand retail executives and other consumer facing businesses executives, what’s your position on customer service? Virtually 100 % of them would say, we believe fervently in customer service. It’s a pillar of our organization’s values.

yada yada yada yada and then they would go on to talk about how involved they are and I would have to tell you that three quarters of them are lying either out of ignorance or they actually know they’re full of it because their company is not practicing any kind of concerted level of customer service so consider the most elemental feature of customer service in retail

in a store. It’s a physical location that’s neat, clean, and friendly. And by the way, it has things on the shelf that customers were invited to come on in and shop for. OK? Either because the retailer has advertised something, or there’s a presumption that they are going to carry something that they believe their customer will seek them out for.

Shelley E. Kohan (24:46.207)
and stop.

Mark Cohen (25:05.783)
So that’s like a price of entry. Now what happens when a store goes to hell? Like for example, Target has gone to hell recently. Empty shelves, poor customer service, sloppy stores, some would say dirty sloppy stores. This is a store that viewed its devotion to customer service under its Disney-led guest program as a pillar of their

their brand equity. What’s happened to it? Well, for a whole variety of reasons, it seems to have slipped through their fingers. Now, go to the online version of customer service. It involves presenting goods that are accurately portrayed photographically and by way of body copy. So what the customer sees is what they’re going to get if they make a purchase decision and the

Promise for delivery and price is implicit. If we say it’ll be on your doorstep in two days, it’s there. At the end of it all, it’s all about meeting customers’ expectations that you yourself set. And it is not rocket science, but it is expensive because it involves managing the bazillions of transactions that take place.

which are human transactions typically or pseudo human because there’s a human on one side of the transaction and there may be another human servicing them or there may be a system servicing them but it’s managing an expectation in an excellent fashion. It’s difficult to set up excellence. It requires enormous vigilance and devotion.

which is mind-numbingly difficult and expensive, but those who deliver reap the whirlwind. Costco, for all that people say, well, it’s just a warehouse, delivers, my experience, outstanding customer service, just outstanding. And they’ve always been of that view.

Mark Cohen (27:31.081)
Walmart was for a decade or more completely oblivious to it. Now they’ve gotten their act together. Target was the paragon of virtue and somehow that’s disappeared. At Federated, my background, customer service was a virtue that completely disappeared and still is to some nonexistent that may cease.

May company was hit or miss mostly miss so so For those who figure out how to deliver There’s tremendous success Amazon is a paragon of virtue in With regard to customer service and that’s not to say they’re perfect But they tend to portray things accurately they tend to honor their promise by way of delivery they tend to

provide customers with a remediation path and customers come away saying, well, I’m happy I did business with them and I’m coming back, as opposed to I’ll never shop with that store again, which is all too often the case when customer service is essentially non-existent.

Shelley E. Kohan (28:49.579)
It’s true and Mark, I have to say that when you talk about this service model and how companies say we’re customer centric, it’s really only when you absolutely positively put the customer in the center of every single solitary decision your company makes that you can actually become customer centric. And the other thing I’ll mention is that the consistency is difficult, especially with retail stores. It’s consistent to execute

excellent service in every store across all the fleet of stores. But I have to mention one company and I just had this conversation the other day. One company spends a lot of time and effort on training. They put the customer in the center of every single decision and they are by far in my opinion one of the few few retailers that consistently deliver customer service.

every single day in every single store and of course that’s Nordstrom.

Mark Cohen (29:53.068)
Let’s hope they can hold on to that characteristic now in the hands of a new owner. As you know, they were the pinnacle of it all. They were the gold standard. I remember it federated. One of the geniuses running federated said, well,

We can deliver their level of service just by adopting their compensation model. And I was a CEO one of the divisions and I had something very crude to say about that idea. I was also the CEO of the division whose customer service of the seven divisions back in the day was number eight or nine. And I was working with some very talented and committed executives who were customer service zealots.

And my role in the mix was to turn them loose and provide them with the support they needed. And we became number one. And we beat the hell out of Bloomingdale’s, we beat the hell out of Bourdain’s, both of whom felt that they were it. And when this view came down the pipe from on high, that all we needed to do was alter our compensation program and we would be fine. That’s just nonsense. You’ve got to

You’ve got to recruit people whose predisposition is to provide service. You’ve got to, I would say, train. Others would say educate, but you have to give them a framework with which to work in, not the least of which is an enormous amount of product knowledge and market understanding. And then you have to monitor the daylights out of their behavior. Reward them when they do what you want and basically remove them when they don’t.

or counsel them and if necessary remove them when they don’t. To your point, it’s a transaction by transaction equity that you either have or don’t. And all you have to do is piss off a customer once and you run the risk of losing them and their family and their friends and neighbors forever.

Shelley E. Kohan (32:14.131)
It’s true, and I agree, hire for attitude, train for skill. That’s what you need to do. It’s all about the attitude. So before we leave the podcast, I just want to get your take on holiday 2025. I know it’s early, but I’d love to hear what are you thinking for holiday 2025? What’s it going to look like for retailers?

Mark Cohen (32:34.599)
To those who say currently, well, inflation is really not that bad and business hasn’t seemingly been affected, I say all of those voices either in print or as talking heads are either, forgive me, just stupid or ignorant. The fact is this trade war became live in early April.

still completely unclear to what extent it will take hold. As recently as yesterday, Trump blinked again with regard to his relationship with China. The actual imposition of tariffs started a couple of weeks ago and will become increasingly evident as we move into the third quarter. I’ve been saying that since April. It’s going to result in explosive

Shelley E. Kohan (33:27.903)
Yes.

Mark Cohen (33:31.296)
increases in price, which will rival what we witnessed during COVID. And the economic effect of this is going to rival what we witnessed during COVID. Fortunately, COVID abated, vaccine was created, it became manageable. Unfortunately, what this administration has created is going to have to run its course for at least three years, and then probably for some years thereafter.

until this lunacy abates. But at the end of the day, how is it going to affect holiday? Look, higher prices mean lower sales. Lower sales mean poor performance. Poor performance means layoffs. Layoffs then fuel poor performance. We’re in for a cycle of, I’m not an economist, if not recession, stagflation, certainly disruption.

And I’m very happy I’m not running a business and forced to make day-to-day decisions on how to price things that are just starting to arrive at tariff levels that are impossible to predict on a day-to-day basis.

Shelley E. Kohan (34:45.245)
I definitely think I agree and I’ve said it too. You’re not even going to see the tariff impact until Q3. And so yeah, there’s a lot of, I don’t know, positive outlook on what’s been happening over the year, but the prices just haven’t been impacted enough. I do think that the low income and middle income consumers are going to be heavily impacted. I’ve already seen lots of surveys of consumers saying they’re going to be cutting back on non-essentials.

So I do think it’s going to put some concerns around the holiday selling period. I also think on a more positive note that AI is gonna be a big feature this year for holiday 2025. I think a lot of shoppers will be using AI to help with gifting and understanding what’s in the marketplace, best values, even curating shopping lists for family, that type of thing. So.

I think shopping could be more convenient with the use of AI. There’ll be a lot of AI shopping assistance. One question I wanted to ask you kind of related to the tariffs and what’s happening going into the Q3 and Q4, and that is do you think retailers, discount retailers, specifically Walmart, who’s really up their fashion game, in my opinion, over the past couple years, do you think that…

they’re actually going to gain a new customer. Do you think that the more fluent customers are going to start trading down in non-essential purchases?

Mark Cohen (36:19.725)
Well, we’ve seen certainly since the 2008 recession that when the consumer is under stress, they trade down. They trade down out of necessity. Their disposable income is fixed. It’s limited. And so to shop, they have to trade down. They trade down in groceries. They trade down in apparel. They trade down in consumables of all sorts. Walmart will be the benefactor of having gotten its mojo together. I’m not going to say back.

but certainly together across a whole variety of dimensions, including their fashion assortments. They’re going to feast on the weakness of Target. They’re going to feast on the weakness of stores like Kohl’s, who basically are bobbing in the sea without a rudder. So Walmart, think, will be fine. Costco is going to be fine, as it has always been. The middle ground folks.

Macy’s, Kohl’s, I don’t think they have much of a chance for a good holiday season. And then of course, isn’t it interesting that the luxury sector has been struggling all year? And what is it about 25%, 30%, 35 % tariffs on European goods causing already inflated prices to rise yet more will make their business exciting.

So you know what, it’s gonna be a very, very inconsistent and bumpy ride and I hope when I said the word grim, I’m being hyperbolic here, but I don’t think so.

Shelley E. Kohan (38:01.077)
Yeah well I did agree with you on Costco who also has up their fashion game.

Mark Cohen (38:08.573)
Exactly. You know, it’s all about having things that customer want to buy and presenting in a setting with regard to price and presentation that’s best practice. And what do customers do? They shop. And what do customers have? They have choice. By the way, Amazon will be just fine. No doubt about it. This end of the de minimis, the de minimis loophole will certainly benefit.

Shelley E. Kohan (38:13.951)
Right.

Mark Cohen (38:38.591)
people like Amazon in a very big way.

Shelley E. Kohan (38:40.459)
Sure.

Well, Mark, always a pleasure having you on. Thank you so much for being here and any other closing thoughts that you have for our great listeners.

Mark Cohen (38:53.611)
Well, everybody needs to stay calm, stay well, and get over the irritation and anger you might be facing when hit with a mandate, and either figure out how to put up with it or find another job.

Shelley E. Kohan (39:09.183)
Love it. Thank you, Mark, and thank you to our listeners. We appreciate your support.

Mark Cohen (39:14.007)
Thanks for your invitation.