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Commentary and Discussion From the Retail Community
Big, Ugly Obstacle Holds Back Online Growth
It’s kind of hard to find fault when you look at the year-to-year upward sales arc that has been ongoing in the world of e-commerce. But, that is exactly what…
Sales Drivers: Women Golfers
Overlooked for years, women golfers are slowly getting the attention of retailers. Golf Galaxy’s fourth annual Women’s Night Out event on April 24 promises women a chance to shop, try…
Refrigerated and Frozen Foods: Ca$h in On Food Trend$
Is it a fad or is it a trend? Yes, the words often are used interchangeably – but in reality, they convey two very different meanings. For most food companies,…
HD Takes Appliance Sales to a Higher Level
Home Depot is serious about building up its home appliance sales to a higher level and it’s adding a second floor inside 25 older stores by mid-June to help it…
What Will Tariffs on Chinese Imports Mean for Consumers?
It’s not as if all imports from China are suddenly going to have tariffs imposed on them. Now that some will, however, it leads to the inevitable questions of how…
BrainTrust Query: Will digitally-based customer assistance help solve store customer service woes?
Plenty of our posts have navel-gazed the ongoing challenges of in-store customer service and how we might resolve them. Exciting new technologies are now appearing that may empower retailers with…
Target Says Yes to Manhattan
Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott may have given up on ever opening a store in Manhattan, but the same doesn’t hold true for Target. According to a report by Women’s Wear…
Part II: Tesco’s Leahy ID’s Global Opportunities
The former Speaker of the House of Representatives Thomas “Tip” O’Neill is widely remembered for his observation that “all politics is local.” As it turns out, the CEO of Tesco,…
Drink Light, Read Light
Just last year, Australia’s On Product Publishing International (OPP) won awards for Best Label and Best Overall Concept at the Bottled Water Design Awards in Bergamo, Italy. Among those who…
Models Need to Make Weight to Work
Weightless waifs need no longer look for modeling work in Spain and India, now that both countries have banned seriously underweight models from strutting their emaciated stuff up and down…
Part I: Tesco’s Leahy ID’s Global Opportunities
Sir Terry Leahy, chief executive of Tesco, told attendees at the first World Retail Congress in Barcelona last week that there are seven trends he believes will have a swift…
RFID and Retailers: Will It Ever Be Perfect Together?
Most of the nation’s major retailers agree RFID is paramount for their futures, especially as a method to put pilferage in check, streamline the process of getting items to the…
Encryption Didn’t Stop TJX Breach
There are many lessons to be learned from the TJX breach but perhaps most important is that encryption is no guarantee that files are safe from hackers. What security lessons…
Sports and the Workplace
Between office pools, fantasy leagues and general “fanaticism,” sports may be contributing to a decline in worker productivity. The Chicago outplacement consulting firm Challenger Gray & Christmas (CGC) recently estimated…
A&F Takes On London
If there’s one lesson companies aiming to operate multi-nationally claim they have learned, it is that they must understand the cultural differences between countries. Take the new London flagship Abercrombie…
Will Online Ad Spending in U.S. Follow U.K. Lead?
For the first time ever in the U.K., share of advertising sales was greater among online sites than newspapers. According to the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), television ad dollars were…
Go Organic! Gains Momentum
Now in its third year, the Go Organic! for Earth Day promotional campaign seems intent on joining the ranks of National Frozen Food Month and Dairy Month as one of…
Circuit City Gives Best Paid the Boot
Roughly 3,400 of the most highly paid workers in Circuit City stores have received a rude surprise as the company announced it was sacking those employees and replacing them with…
Material Girl Gives Fashion a Whirl
Joining a parade of celebrities with their own fashion lines, Madonna last week launched her highly anticipated “M by Madonna” collection at fast-fashion Swedish retailer, H&M. What do you…
Consumers Marketing to Themselves
Where America leads, the world sometimes follows. Certainly in terms of consumption and finding ways to increase it, this is true. Countless surveys can be cited to emphasize that people…
Can Wal-Mart Get Into Sainsbury Bidding?
It hasn’t been for a lack of trying that Wal-Mart has been unable to unseat Tesco at the top of the U.K. retailing heap. It is because of its…
