Please excuse the pun, I just had to make it to grab your attention. I want you, and I want your engagement – to read and perhaps share this article, but much more importantly, to make sustainability a wholehearted top priority in 2020.
Guido Schild
Brand Sales and Distribution 2020: New Ways to Drive International Growth
Overall brand growth remains mostly dynamic in 2019. But as financial reports show, growth rates have decreased for many. Be it in the US or in Europe, especially domestic-bound retailers and brands stumble.
Global expansion in sales and distribution competence has become a lifesaving strategy feature, but allow me a personal question first:
Drive Dynamic Brand Growth or Maintain Profitability: EBIT vs. EBITDA KPI Slam
After a tumultuous year that almost saw the company drowned by its previous strategic investor, German vertical retailer Hallhuber found a financial investor in Robus Capital Management. Management of both firms agrees to invest in brand growth.
Good Workmanship & Best Practice Management Are Key to Growth
The speed of global brand growth has been slowing down. While fast-movers pay a high price for restructuring, successful brands continue to grow with brand best practice management.
Whether Tommy Hilfiger wins over Zalando buyers with a digital showroom, Rapha thrives thanks to their tight-knit membership community, or Lululemon enters new markets on grassroots values – brand best practice management enables brands to outgrow competitors. (more…)
Freitag: Brand Development Made in Switzerland
In 2019, shoppers love unique products and great brand stories. If on top of that you sell upcycled products and are a niche company from a small country, you have all the ingredients for a memorable brand story.
If someone had told you in 1993 that Freitag would manage to turn truck tarps into it bags in Seoul by 2019, and create a best practice brand development story in the process, you may have questioned their judgement.
Rapha is not a brand, it’s brand community management at its best
How does a small UK cycling apparel brand become the global benchmark for brand community management? Here’s why brands around the world use Rapha as a best practice case study.
In case a cycling jersey isn’t yet part of your casual wardrobe, read this brand story to learn why bike apparel may well set trends in mainstream clothing by 2025.
Global Retail Best Practice 2019
The likes of Amazon and Alibaba open tech-heavy brick & mortar stores, but best practice commercial brand retail still happens elsewhere.
Early sales reports indicate that 2018 was a good year for large parts of the lifestyle brand industry. Almost 4/5 of the top 100 European and US American lifestyle brands had a growth year, and for the most part did better than in 2017. This was despite a global department store fallout and online growth and was largely based on store growth.
Brick & Mortar is the new Online: E-commerce Trends 2019
Amazon just released sales numbers for 2018 and the details indicate that the mother of all e-commerce is confronted with new growth realities.
And Amazon is not the only one.
- GLORE, the stock index for global online retailers stayed far behind old economy stocks.
- E-commerce became ‘weather sensitive’, had bankruptcies and major players missed sales forecasts by far.
- Almost all online pure players are working on brick & mortar concepts, already leading to over 20 stores in Berlin.
So let’s look at the fundamentals behind the e-commerce trends 2019 that indicate a new direction in growth.
How to Measure Omnichannel Management Success
Brand growth management already has many KPIs. What omnichannel measurement do you use to determine the payback of your investment?
Summertime is brand strategy planning time, when brand managers prepare for battle with their KPIs to prepare for new recruiting and securing a higher share of next year’s investments for their channel. But consumers have fundamentally challenged that profit centre logic. Perhaps it’s also time to rework your brand investment planning and the KPIs that measure brand growth success?
Amazon on the Road to Omnichannel Retail Success?
While most brands and retailers are building and expanding their online stores, Amazon is investing in brick & mortar: a surprising update on Amazon’s omnichannel retail status.
Let’s imagine for a moment that you’re running a billion-dollar brand. Last year’s net expansion of stores was negative (not counting a recent acquisition) and your share in online sales remains below 5%. Can you already feel how analysts and journalists rip you to shreds over your unconvincing omnichannel retailing?
Adidas Best Practice Brand Distribution Strategy
Aiming for the world’s most affluent consumers in highly competitive environments: Adidas’ ‘Top City Strategy 2020’ is at halfway, what is best practice and what can you learn for your business?
It’s widely known that consumer markets and brand distribution channels have fundamentally changed over the past 25 years in more ways than anticipated. Fact is, the internet as a brand distribution channel grew from 0 to commonly 8-15% of sales. But far more relevant from a commercial and strategic perspective is that many formerly emerging countries, especially China and countries in the Middle East and Central Europe, grew to 30-40% of total sales and profits in lifestyle brand distribution.
7 Key Success Factors for Excellence in Tourist Retail
Affluent tourists are sought after shoppers and a retail market’s most attractive segment. What does it take to grow your tourist retail sales?
Those of you working in travel retail know Global Blue. The company services tourist retail around the globe with VAT refund services. In this way they collect valuable information about a very precious consumer group. With more than 30 years in that business, they have collected a lot of valuable consumer information. Global Blue have shared some of their insights together with the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). This post takes an in-depth look at an example of these insights: the habits of Brazilian consumers and their luxury spending. (more…)
Engaging Associates: Best Practice Retail Operations at Polo Ralph Lauren
Your KPIs, dashboard and performance management are in place, but your retail operations are missing that final touch? This best practice story shows how new technologies can help you win at associate engagement too.
Put yourself in the shoes of a senior vice president of outlet retail for a lifestyle brand in Europe who runs a few stores across several countries. Your stores are commercially successful, and your brand is an anchor tenant for many landlords. But you observe that you could do even better by becoming more engaged in retail operations. Are you tempted to push that old KPI and performance management button to reach your full- and part-time store associates? And, how well has that worked out for you in the past?
Best Practice Brand Retail Flagship made in Berlin
A unique brand story from a small Berlin Brand and inspirational example that excellent retail flagship are not just created by multi billion corporations.
A couple of decades apart, two designers cross Berlin streets and leave their mark. The first designs a lasting cultural icon for a nation behind the iron curtain. The second saves it from oblivion by turning it into an iconic brand.
Inspiring Brand Retail Best Practices for 2018
Pick the brand retail best practices from 24* cities and 6 topic areas that will work for you. To a good start and comp growth in your new business year!
It was a good year for the brand lifestyle industry in Europe and the US. Reading interim reports suggests that the majority of top brands have grown despite challenges in wholesale and full price retail distribution. While not true for all, this goes to illustrate another year of beautiful distribution complexity and financial challenges.
That One Perfect Day: How UGG Solves the Ice Cream Problem
Thanksgiving in the US, Ramadan in the Middle East, Christmas, or simply next Saturday: high traffic days define the brand store operations winners. Here’s how UGG does it.
Brand store operations is not a complicated job. As a sales clerk in lifestyle retail, it comprises three core processes: 1. receiving and displaying merchandise, 2. serving customers and 3. removing goods from the shelf to make room for the new season.
Retail Performance: I Like Like for Like – I don’t Like Like for Like
H&M gave up their monthly reporting in July. An indication of an ailing retailer? Debatable – Zara never did it in the first place.
Three years after H&M gave up on like for like reporting, they stopped publishing monthly sales figures altogether. H&M follows the path of other well-known retailers that no longer publicly report monthly details of their like for like retail performance. (more…)
How to get Quality into your Brand Strategy and Planning
Key learnings of 30 years brand strategy and planning. Tips how to improve your brand growth planning, today.
In January, Reuters reported that 38 % of 406 major US companies prepared for 2017 with a zero-based budget (ZBB) approach, and cites a respective 2016 Bain study. How lifestyle brands had planned for 2017 is unknown, but in the light of the US retail environment, many brands had to apply major cost cutting exercises to adjust their strategy and planning.
1000 Myths, 60 Locations & 5 Formats – The Facts about the Amazon Retail Strategy
Amid many myths and rumors, this research sheds light on the facts, corporate communication, and the evidence from physical store openings. Long quality read.
Imagine you own 43% of your online market, and 50% of the online growth, but 85% of your market continues to be brick & mortar? Imagine (more…)
The Amazon Book Store – Zero Cross Channel Services and Other Surprises
A retail pro report from Amazon’s brick & mortar book store in Seattle, a consumer experience with zero cross channel services. Only an app secured the sale.
I have to admit, I have a love-hate relationship with Amazon. As a consumer, I like their ultimate convenience for need shopping, yet find their attempts at inspiring my impulse shopping utterly over the top. As a brand and retail manager, I love them for (more…)