On October 9, 2019, I wrote Forever 21: Cut Your Losses and Die Happily and predicted Forever 21’s demise, and why. And predictably, they slipped into bankruptcy. However, they found a life-support respirator, a collective called Authentic Brands Group, Simon […]
Forever 21: Third Try in China, Charmed or Strikeout? Read More »
Email marketing is dead. A full inbox causes stress and anxiety, and it doesn’t facilitate purchasing. This is especially true among next-gens, who prefer almost any other communication tool to inbox-centric dialogue. A 2020 study from consulting firm Creative Strategies found
Why Legacy Retailers Are Moving to TikTok and Other Video Tools Read More »
Despite the fact that Covid-19 and the Delta variant are still creeping around the nation, enough people have received vaccines that highly-vaccinated regions are “opening up” and “getting back” to pre-Covid life – mostly sans masks and social distancing. The
New Experiences and Stores Post-Covid Read More »
Even as many retail companies have been working to reimagine their physical stores with experiential elements ranging from in-store events and interactive displays to entertainment, a whole new wave of businesses are now starting up where the entertainment itself is
Immersive Retailing Is the Next Big Thing Read More »
Here’s one for the century. The reopening of La Samaritaine in Paris redefines the whole concept of a department store. In fact, “department” is immediately antiquated and irrelevant in this new marketplace model. We recently caught up with Kevin Roche
La Samaritaine: A Dazzling Makeover Read More »
Retail discovery has yet another channel, this time it really is a channel … well actually a streaming service. Experimentation in customer discovery is extending beyond social commerce into the greater media sphere. June 2021 was a busy month for
Nontraditional Brands Break into Retail Read More »
Few individual retail stores have had the ups and downs of the Bed Bath & Beyond store on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. And with its grand reopening in July as the flagship for the rapidly changing home furnishings retailer, the
Why the New Bed Bath & Beyond Store is the Best Retail Redo…Ever Read More »
There’s an old adage: You get what you get, and you don’t get upset. Clearly, that doesn’t apply to retail. For some time now, the axiom has been customers want what they want, when they want it. And Covid-19 accelerated
Cater to Your Customers — Locally Read More »
If you think of yesterday’s “mass market” as a nice glass bowl, that market today has shattered into a thousand small fragments of glass. This was the opening sentence in Chapter 4 of my co-authored book with Michael Dart, Retail’s
The Great Fragmentation and AI: The Case for Neighborhood Shops Read More »
Over the past decade, \”omnichannel\” has become one of the most common buzzwords in retail. Retail executives, industry consultants, and analysts all agree on the importance of integrating the brick-and-mortar and online channels so that customers can move seamlessly between
Why Omnichannel Is So Hard Read More »
