Heike Blank
3 Innovative Distribution Models: Lifeline & Disruptor
Three innovative distribution models currently help retailers to survive the Covid-19 lockdowns and new players to disrupt traditional markets. (more…)
“Online-Goes-Offline” – Never Waste a Good Crisis
Introducing an interesting new online-goes-offline case, one which could benefit from the changes in retail landscape accelerated by Covid-19
Covid-19 keeps changing the retail landscape, and will probably do so for a long time. In my previous post I wrote about this changing retail landscape and its effect on commercial, social and cultural life in our city centers.
Post-Covid City Centres: Deserted Wastelands or Thriving Hubs?
Much has been said and written about the disaster the pandemic has brought to the global retail landscape. This post highlights challenges and opportunities for retail and social life in our post Covid-19 city centres.
By August 5th 2020, 50% more stores (3,140) in the UK were affected by retail bankruptcies than in the entire year 2019 (2,051 stores). The Guardian reports footfall drops of 40% in August 2020 vs. last year. And there are still 5 months to go.
Shop, Work, Meet & Eat in the Time of Corona: 5 Best Practices in Social Distancing
Social Distancing turns profitability into an even bigger challenge for businesses. These five best practice examples show how social distancing can go hand in hand with creativity and innovation.
Staff Cost Reduction Ahead
The ongoing coronavirus crisis adds to deep dips in store traffic. As retailers look at staff cost reduction to minimise the negative effect on their bottom line, this case study provides insights beyond a simple staff cost vs. sales ratio.
Cheese Please! A Lesson in Brand Building
How to turn cheese from an every-day commodity into a sought-after lifestyle brand? Join us for a brand building lesson from Cheese & More by Henri Willig.
How to Measure Staff Motivation: The Big Unknown
Staff motivation is notoriously difficult to capture. This article shows how to combine Footfall Utilisation Index with Staffing Index to truly measure staff motivation.
BIOGENA – a unique retail concept and multichannel execution at its best
How the small Austrian company shook up the distribution of an entire market
How to Drive International Expansion Without Escalating Complexity
Customise or standardise? That’s perhaps the most important question a brand at the beginning of its international expansion has to answer.
Depending on who you ask, you will get very different answers. If you ask your brand and marketing management, they will vote for as much standardisation as possible. If you ask your sales force, the answer will be quite the opposite.
What Locations Make Your Retail Format Successful?
Despite constant change and disruption in today’s market, retail location is still an a key success factor. Do you know what type of locations are best for your format?
Growth in Saturated Markets: Dreams in Chocolate and Ice Cream!
Selling chocolate in Europe is tough because growth in saturated markets is tough. Three case studies show how chocolate and ice cream manufacturers grow successfully by diversifying their assortment.
Optimal Retail Space: How Big Should Your Assortment Be?
Finding the right assortment size is a key question for retail performance projects. Learn about a simple method to determine assortment size for retailers with several stores in comparable locations.
How to Improve Your Hit Rate and Make Good Use of Bestseller Potential
When brands need to reshape their portfolio and close stores, they face the challenge of improving Like-4-Like performance at the remaining points of sale. The two product strategies introduced here help improve the top and bottom line of your P&L.
Improving like-4-like performance often focuses on mechanics and triggers that can be influenced by sales staff and a retail organisation. Surprisingly, it often excludes an honest evaluation of the assortment’s performance. This article shows how improving hit rate and using best seller potential can push sell-through, create incremental sales potential, reduce mark-downs and improve the gross margin. (more…)
Culinary Treats & Shopping
The way to a customer’s heart is through their stomach! Culinary treats have the potential to increase conversion rates and average ticket size for retailers. Success isn’t guaranteed, but these factors significantly reduce the risk of failure.
More and more retailers, shopping centres and cities invest in new, attractive and unique food and beverage concepts. These concepts often differ in level of integration between culinary treats and shopping.
Partner Retail Transparency
Everything you should know about your potential partner retailer’s business and how to get the information you need.
There are many reasons why it makes sense to conquer a market through reliable retail partners. Besides the shared risk, lower investment and faster growth, you may want to benefit from your partner retailer’s deeper understanding of the market – the local players, dynamics (e.g. real estate and channel development) and consumer behaviours – before opening your own retail stores. (more…)
Retail Portfolio Management: Store Staff Performance
While excellent staff and service are what distinguishes brick and mortar from online retailers, staff performance is often overlooked in store evaluations. Two new KPIs help account for the human factor.
When evaluating a retail portfolio, very often mangers only look at the financial results of a store. But excellent service, competent and dedicated sales staff are a key differentiator of brick and mortar retailers. A fair and objective store staff performance evaluation is therefore increasingly important. This article introduces two new KPIs that help to fairly evaluate staff performance and to determine optimal staffing for each store in your portfolio.
Retail Portfolio Management: Renegotiating Your Rental Contracts
This is the second installment of a short series that dives into a few uncommon KPIs for successful retail portfolio management. Learn how traffic cost and footfall per hour can help you renegotiate rental contracts.
For many years, retail expansion was the main growth strategy in the brand retail world. More recently, however, brands increasingly face an under-performing retail portfolio. Realising that retail expansion doesn’t work without like-for-like growth of existing stores, brands are busy assessing their retail portfolios in order to focus on profitable stores and stores with potential for improvement.
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Retail Portfolio Assessment: The Good Ones Into the Pot, the Bad Ones Into Your Crop
What tools are available to help brands choose their most promising retail locations, and identify the not so promising ones? Let’s mobilise some unusual KPIs!
Inspired online stores, a lack of innovation in brick & mortar retail, overpriced retail locations and double-digit traffic losses all contribute to diluting 4-Wall contributions of many brick & mortar stores. It’s therefore no big surprise that we are frequently asked to help brands to pick out the most promising retail locations, to identify locations to shut down and, even more importantly, to identify the ones with potential for store performance improvement.
Goats on a Roof! And What’s Your USP?
As far as unique selling propositions go, goats on a roof are pretty unique. And this offline-only retail location on Vancouver Island has turned them into a long-term success story without selling a single goat.
Once upon a time there was a tiny fruit booth near the Trans-Canada Highway that served Vancouverites en route to their weekend and summer houses as well as tourists exploring an island full of natural beauty. That was back in the 70ies when Kristian and Solveig Graaten, who had migrated from Norway 20 years earlier, decided to start a small retail business on Vancouver Island.
In the meantime, this little fruit stall has become the queen of retail locations and one of the most frequented tourist attractions on Vancouver Island: The Coombs Old Country Market.