Early in the morning, just as soon as the Census Department released its Advanced Monthly Retail Trade Survey for December 2020, I took a cursory look. It told me what I needed to know. Retail was doing reasonably well by […]
NRF’s Confounding Holiday Growth Pronouncement Read More »
The second weekend in January was \”Wild Card Weekend\” in the NFL, where all the teams with so-so seasons had one last chance to prove their mettle or suffer certain elimination from a chance to play in this year\’s Super
20 Wildcards for ‘21 Read More »
Marc Lore announced his departure from his role as President and CEO of Walmart\’s ecommerce business (which included Jet.com prior to its being shut down in June of 2020 and absorbed into walmart.com) at the end of January. Was it
Did Marc Lore Get the Walmart Boot? Or Mission Accomplished? Read More »
One storyline that was somewhat overlooked during the unfolding drama surrounding sleepy videogame retailer GameStop earlier this month – a David vs. Goliath story egged on by Elon Musk in which thousands of small retail day traders looked to deep-six
For Retailers, It’s Time to “Go Green” or Go Home Read More »
Consumers are still trapped at home and they’re picking up some new hobbies. The DIY market is booming, and Euromonitor predicts that DIY sales will grow by 6.1 percent globally in the new year. However, when researching the category, one
DIY Is Back in a Big Way, With a Few New Spins Read More »
I\’m a Ralph Lauren aficionado. Long a fan of the brand and its overarching idea, \”The World of Ralph Lauren,\” I continue to think it is the best articulated and most consistently executed brand in the fashion, apparel and retail
Ralph Lauren: Maintaining a Brand During a Pandemic Read More »
Conventional wisdom insists the world as we’ve come to know it this past year balances precariously on a polarizing precipice: economic instability vs. the stock market’s irrational exuberance. Remember what happened to irrational exuberance? Consumer behavior today straddles a tipping
The New Consumer Faces an Anxious Future Read More »
The Great American Shopping Mall, a truly unique 20th century phenomenon, emerged for the first time in the late 1960s and exploded across the United States over the next three decades. Tracking alongside the interstate highway system and embedded in
The Retail Apocalypse: Up Close and Personal Read More »
The genesis of the state of the retail industry today in the U.S. began about a quarter century ago as a slowly rolling transformation resulting from the launch of the smartphone. And you could add Amazon into the mix as
That Was the Year That Was…and Wasn’t Read More »
Retail, like much of the rest of corporate America, is entering an era of corporate political activism. In the wake of last week’s seizure of the Capitol building in Washington, DC by pro-Trump supporters, Fortune 500 heavyweights are now weighing
Corporate Social Justice Is Now a Permanent Feature of the Retail Landscape Read More »
