Guido is a brand & retail manager who has worked for 25+ years for small and high profile brands in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. As founder of Team Retail Excellence, he has assisted entrepreneurs and managers to successfully grow their brand distribution. He is currently working on his book on global best practices for brand growth management, while he continues to coach brands on their strategic growth path.
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?
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?
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.
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…)
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?
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.
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.
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.
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…)
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.
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…)
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…)
Factory outlets are brands’ most profitable retail distribution method; and a bricks-&-mortar market still growing. We shed light on the outlet strategy of top brands.
Today Düsseldorf witnessed a unique and crazy retail premiere. The grand dame of New York department store retail, Saks 5th Avenue landed its first store in Europe, Saks OFF 5th: an outlet.
DTC became brands’ favourite distribution channel, but it is investment heavy. Partner retail is lighter and more profitable. VF, Pandora and Levi’s show how to grow both.
If you are like most premium and mid-market brands, partner retail is not an own distribution channel, but a strategic stepchild. If you want to determine where you are, allow me these 3 health questions:
There are store closure programs wherever you look. But online pure players and successful brands continue to invest in retail expansion. So why is this?
To start with, I’m a finance and control guy by origin, certainly not a creative that simply likes brand stores because of their looks. I love retail expansion, because with the right ingredients almost any product category and brand can operate profitable stores – but you’d better know how. Retail expansion strategies have been my most interesting assignments, because the store operations models behind the façade are as complex as they are colourful. (more…)
In the competitive sporting goods industry, not many brands succeed in reaching the top, but Lululemon and Under Armour have. We outline how they created brand growth and whether they have the potential to stay on top.
Over the last couple of years some sporting goods brands have managed to gain visibility and market share and two of them – Lululemon and Under Armour – have shown an outstanding brand growth development. (more…)
Investing in wholesale buying processes was not a brand industry priority over the last few years. Tommy Hilfiger prioritized it though and created best practice.
The media is flooded with stories of new future stores and advanced consumer technologies. All brand investment strategies point towards direct-to-consumer, while digital wholesale transition is far from flavour of the month. Despite this, Tommy Hilfiger launched a new digital showroom in 2015 that has been piloted and is now being rolled out across the globe has all the ingredients for best practice wholesale buying processes.(more…)
Speed of global brand growth is slowing down. Fast mover strategies pay a high price for restructuring. Successful brands grow with brand best practices.
Whether Tommy Hilfiger convinces Zalando buyers with a digital showroom, a Royal Copenhagen store manager in Japan tracks KPIs by hand, or Lululemon enters new markets on grassroots values – brand best practices, small and large, enable brands to outgrow competitors. (more…)
L4L, Share DTC, Mark Downs, Space Density, 4W-Contribution, … there were far too many brand performance metrics to manage brand distribution easily. And now with social media & the internet arriving, another set of 10 KPIs are supposed to be important.
Next year’s planning arrives soon with many new priorities for your business agenda 2018. It’s likely you have already far too many topics to focus easily, but allow me to suggest one more topic. I promise it will be done after a day, or will create you some enlightenment towards your true needs & priorities. All you have to do is ask 10 members of your team one question. Their answers will give you the key to a year with better focus, an increased performance and potentially 50% less management reports.
If you are a great brand and plan to grow in international retail, make sure you have a competitive brand business model. It takes more than six packs to be successful.
As the beach boy six packs are no longer in action, what is the brand’s competitive edge? Can you remember any new store opening hype lately for Abercrombie? In 2011, at the height of Abercrombie & Fitch’s international expansion, we looked for the first time at the brand’s P&L and its retail KPIs (see retail intrapreneur). In 2011 alone, US$230m in capital expenditure was spent on expansion in Asia and Europe. The US management was counting on the success of the brand’s international expansion. We questioned whether the business model was ready for European growth.
