Retail insights at the intersection of now and next. Unfiltered. Unbiased
Marcy is a customer-centric strategist and innovator; founder of Schaffir Consulting in 2022 she has been one of the most successful leaders in the industry at Lane Bryant, L Brands, LensCrafters, Ann Taylor, and Saks Fifth Avenue. Her leadership philosophy is based on her conviction to, “Stop waiting; start asking.”
Operationally rigorous retail is harder to replicate than it appears. It requires clear strategic priorities, disciplined assortment planning, and investment in format evolution. It demands alignment among merchandising, real estate, design, operations and the buy-in of the workforce. It requires the organization’s maturity to say no when necessary.
Every company that came along after them said they were the “Warby Parker of…whatever” and virtually every one of them failed, collapsed or morphed into a traditional business that had little if anything to do with DTC.
Join Shelley and Romain Fouache, CEO of Akeneo, as they discuss why eBay’s acquisition of Depop for $1.2 billion strengthens its core business and marks a structural inflection point.
The Barnes & Noble strategy of deferring to local taste over stock-wide uniformity and treating stores as community hubs rather than depots of inventory stands in stark contrast to Amazon’s homogenized and algorithmically curated marketplace.
Retail, which has always been a canary in the coal mine with regard to the behavior of our overall economy, will now be under even more significant pressure this year. Retail does, after all, make up some 70 percent of the U.S. economy. The guarded prognosis, widely held by many, if not most, industry leaders, becomes even more problematic with a war underway in Iran. If this conflict becomes a “forever war,” inflation could become explosive.
Even well-off Gen Zs don’t have the once-promising career prospects as their millennial predecessors—and let’s be real, it’s hard to justify buying a $4,500 Murikami+LV bag with Afterpay if you have no prospect of money coming in.
The Saudi luxury consumer is values-led and socially attuned: they invest in quality, heritage, and prestige, but they also look for meaning, local resonance, and a brand’s ability to show respect through detail.
OK, play it again one more time. At first, I thought I was reading the satirical Onion when I saw an interview with former Saks/Neiman’s/HBC/Lord & Taylor/etc., self-styled entrepreneur.
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