Retail insights at the intersection of now and next. Unfiltered. Unbiased
Rachel Williamson is founder and chief retail advisor of Running Great Stores. She has dedicated her career to retail as a keen observer of what works well and fails on a grand scale in the industry.
Consumers are great at spotting the difference between a product that exists because someone is famous and a good product that exists because someone built an audience around shared interest and expertise.
With its announcement this week that it will split itself into two companies—one for its stores and the other for its pharmacy benefit management and insurance arm—CVS Health will undo the $78 billion merger that created the conglomerate in 2018 that was supposed to be the vertically integrated solution to health care.
Join Haley and James Reinhart, Co-founder and CEO at ThredUp, as they discuss the brand’s origin story, its dedication to sustainability, the managed marketplace business model, and what it’s like to be a disruptor. This dialogue is revealing and compelling; ThredUp is more than a commercial enterprise, it’s a reflection of cultural and consumer values.
Any retailer should be clear about what it cannot match; it should decide what it can own. A local retailer can know its customers more closely, change the floor faster than a chain can approve a reset, and make choices no national planogram would allow. Those advantages count only if the store is run to a high standard, with the same attention on a Tuesday afternoon as on a holiday weekend.
The world of constant connectivity has, quite naturally, extended to how customers interact with the staff at their local store. The same drive for authenticity propelling next-gen customers to forego flaw-covering concealer for an expressive pimple patch drives them to connect with real local store associates online.
Hey Retail Executive, your customer thinks you’re a crook. A new study says more than 85 percent of consumers believe retailers are playing games with their pricing ahead of Black Friday. Duh.
IKEA’s heritage means there are limits to how far the brand can move upmarket or deviate from its traditional offer. IKEA’s identity rests on the idea that well-designed furniture should be affordable, and if premium collections become too expensive, or services add costs that customers are unwilling to pay, the company risks weakening the very essence of its brand.
When Dollar General settled with the New York State Attorney General’s office, admitting it overcharged customers by as much as 39 percent—39 PERCENT!—and paying out $1.875 million to consumers, it had to be a pretty embarrassing moment. Here’s one of the nation’s biggest retailing corporations, one that prides itself on low prices and great values doing a big fat oops and hoping not too many people notice.
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