Nothing and Everything Go ahead guys! Just shove more onto the gargantuan, growing piles of stuff that no one needs — much of which will be dumped onto barges and sent to third-world countries after it fails to be sold […]
What Do Michael Kors, Under Armour and Bonobos Have in Common? Read More »
Luxury licensing is suffering from a bad reputation resulting from its over use by brands back in the 20th century. Specifically, luxury brand names often were linked to substandard, poor quality products that were marketed too widely. Quality and exclusivity
Luxury Licensing: A Rose By Any Other Name… Read More »
Recently, word reached me that an old friend, colleague and an important mentor early in my career, had died. Aside from an unwelcome reminder of my own mortality it made me wonder whether the art of mentoring is becoming as
Mentoring On a Two-Way Street Read More »
The distribution century marches on. Its poster child and undisputed leader, Amazon, continues to amaze most people perhaps, but not me. I see Amazon’s bigger picture as it relates to its plans to open about 100 pop-up stores in malls
Amazon Pop-Ups? Don’t Kid Yourself Read More »
Coming out of the Goldman Sachs Annual Retail Conference last week, I had a very uneasy feeling (other than the fact that Goldman once again delivered a first class conference). As I sat through each presentation, I searched for the
Controlled Chaos: An Industry on Edge Read More »
Just the Tip of the Iceberg The Nordstroms do not accept compliments easily. And when they do, (as Blake Nordstrom did for a cover article I wrote over a year ago), it was with a shrug, and a quiet “thanks,
Nordstrom Partners with J. Crew Read More »
Last week I blogged about Walmart’s acquisition of Jet.com, for $3.3 billion. In one fell swoop, Walmart gained Jet’s revenues (estimated at over a billion dollars its first year, nonetheless unprofitable), several distribution centers, 12 million SKUs, a growing millennial
A couple of years ago, the head of Nabisco called me because of a problem his channel partners had plopped down on his doorstep. Seems they had videos of women starting down the cookie aisles of their stores—and then backing
The Decline & Fall of Retail As We Know It Read More »
America@250, a multiyear research initiative and national dialogue launched by A.T. Kearney, looks ahead to what America may be like in 2026 when the nation will celebrate its 250th birthday. This ongoing inquiry includes Retail@250, a study of the immediate
Leading Through Change: A Perspective from Paul Charron Read More »
The Kroger Co. Has Been on Quite a Tear For a while now, Kroger has posted what is doubtless the best financial record of any conventional supermarket company. Check out these metrics: For 49 quarters in a row, it has
Kroger’s Private Recipe Read More »
