Joni Mitchell wrote the line “They paved Paradise and put up a parking lot.” How much of our lives are defined by parking. Call it a tangible ramification of the invention of the wheel or perhaps an odd cultural addiction […]
A Parking Lot Story Read More »
“Portfolio reshaping.” Apparently that’s now beauty-biz code for: “Let us take whatever wasn’t working for you – including some stuff that really and truly wasn’t working for you – and see what we can do with it.” Presumably that wasn’t
While P&G and Coty Shuffle the Deck, Unilever Does Some Stealth Scooping of Its Own Read More »
A&P’s Long Goodbye For the second time in less than five years, A&P has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Two Chapter 11s in close sequence like that are sometimes cynically called a “Chapter 22.” But this is no joke. By
Supermarket Disruption and Dissolution Read More »
Pardon my ‘60s pot metaphors of late. There’s just maniacal, seemingly drug-induced behavior happening and it seems to be going viral across many industries. In particular, I think there’s a lot of legalized pot being passed around among Internet start-ups,
Jet.com: Reefer Madness Read More »
In the developed world, retailing remains under siege. As we know, a steady flow of new Internet competitors vie for consumer dollars, frequently undercutting prices of the brick-and-mortar stores. Meanwhile, amidst a sea of sameness with parity products, traditional retailers
At Your Service: Two Case Studies Read More »
More Like A Slow, Sears-Like Descent To The Bottom? Glenn Murphy exits. Art Peck takes over. It matters not who the players are because there has been a revolving door full of them for the past 15 years, all declaring
There Is No Gap Déjà Vu Read More »
By now, you\’ve heard the news that Target is launching new smaller stores under the CityTargets name. Likewise, Walmart continues to introduce smaller-scale stores as it seeks to expand into urban locales. Big-box retailer Best Buy is focused on its
Small Is the Next Big Story in Retail Read More »
Another batch of disrupters is eyeing the retail food industry. And, strange to say, they’re knocking on your door in a cardboard box. These disrupters are meal kits. The meal-kit business is a fledgling form of retail food distribution that
Disruptors at the Door Read More »
Remember the old adage that “retail follows the rooftops”? If you do, then you probably have fond memories of the Eisenhower administration, the post World War II suburban building boom when Sears Roebuck and J.C. Penney ruled the retail roost,
Fiddling with the Roofs Read More »
If you’re older than a minute, and in the beauty biz in any way, shape or form, you will remember the epic hotness of one Frédéric Fekkai. There was another guy named Oribe who was equally epically hot at the
