According to a recent WSJ article, retailers just want the right amount of stuff this Christmas. They might want a gift receipt. "After a holiday of too much inventory and…
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Retail Intelligence - The Retail Strategy Group Blog
The game of "broken telephone" is often a riot at parties. For those who don't know what this is: Players gather in a circle and player one comes up with…
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I love it when guest speakers come into my Fashion Business Marketing class to talk to my students. Maria Carlton, Sr. Director of Global Go To Market at Under Armour,…
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When I first started at Ralph Lauren in 2015, sales were mediocre for Lauren. The UK wasn’t doing as well as Germany or France and no one really knew why.…
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We presented yesterday in NYC for the Canadian Consulate General's Technology Accelerator program. Our discussion focused on process innovation in retail and how that impacts the adoption of technology. Why…
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Our friends at the Accessories Council invited me to an intimate event at the beautiful Rizzoli bookstore for Diane Von Furstenburg’s book launch. DVF embodies women before fashion and she…
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We are thrilled to be a part of the ongoing success story that is the Canadian Technology Accelerator (CTA) program by the Consulate of Canada in New York City, focusing…
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A new drinking game – take a shot anytime someone in retail mentions the term “customer-centric.” Or some variation thereof. "Put the customer in the center of all decision making” …
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Re-think speed to market. Instead, look at Velocity to Market. In physics, speed has no direction. It’s simply a number. A measure. Of distance over time. But... Velocity has a…
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As a retail buyer, my vendors loved me. Buying appointments were a breeze. Vendors didn’t have to show physical samples of items already proven to be top sellers or the…
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KPMG recently published its Retail Executive Outlook for 2023. 71% of retail executives are prioritizing supply chain efficiency for this year. How will they accomplish this? Their top priority to…
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Exceptional retail merchants possess these three traits: They know who their customer is. Thus, they know how to serve them with the product they want. They know how to curate…
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The typical retail end-to-end process can be visualized, simply, as a line. This makes sense, the end-to-end is very much a linear process. As such, visibility into the product journey…
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Retailers use loyalty programs to keep customers coming back to them more often and spend more when they do. There is one more layer to this. Loyalty is about forsaking…
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Products don’t tell stories. People do. Product assortments shouldn't be telling stories - rather, they must have a distinct point of view. It reflects what the brand stands for. There…
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Welcome to The Merchant Life - the newsletter where over 800 of your peers get merchandising insights and an insider perspective of all things retail. We were recently in NYC to speak at…
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Welcome to The Merchant Life - the newsletter where over 800 retail pros gain valuable merchandising insights and the insider perspective of all things retail. We’re writing this as we travel through Europe,…
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Howdy and welcome to a special, mid-month edition of The Merchant Life newsletter. We’re working away on our regularly scheduled merchandising insight coming your way on September 1st. In the meantime, there…
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