Cross Channel

Cross Channel services describes the consumer services that a retailer provides to ease consumers’ information, communication and travel between its various distribution channels. An excellent journey allows consumers to check for new products online, find the next physical store, check the products’ in-store availability. At advanced retailers, the consumer can make a product reservation (click & reserve), buy online and pick up the product in-store (click & collect) and return items purchased online at the nearest store (buy online & return offline).

The Future in Brand Distribution – in Search of a 1000 Minds

How are these snapshots for a future in brand distribution?

“2025 retail rents will be like 2020 flight routes: back to the 1980s.” “The future is social commerce, digital market places are an interim hype, for brand industry’s e-com latecomers.” “In five years, an office workspace and business travel will be recruiting incentives.” “Grandpa tells me, his company used to pay him for sourcing travel to adventurous rural locations.”

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Retail Operations 2020: Time to Manage Outside of the Box

Barely 20 years ago all retail operations took place in high street store formats. Then cross channel happened, and now Covid-19, and efficient retail operations are utterly transformed.

In the early years of this century, brand retail operation felt like paradise. Store networks were growing globally and being an expanding head of retail was a fun job. Managing high street stores, factory outlets, concession stores and flagships, having CEOs promote direct to consumer growth, and even the CFO was happy. All that was needed for retail operation was easily organised and within the store ‘boxes’. But soon brand stores encountered mighty antagonists.

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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?

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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.

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Top Sporting Goods Brands Not Fit for Cross Channel Experience

Most brands are pretty bad at cross channel experience, says the New Milliennial. That was what my father and I wanted to verify during a recent online-offline retail study tour in London.

Asics, Adidas, New Balance, Nike, and Puma were our main brands of interest. To assess their cross channel services thoroughly my father and I went on research for best practices at a wide range of brands and retailers.

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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 audit 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…)

Managing the Impact of Double Digit Footfall Drops

How a new retail KPI can help to keep store performance on track and retail staff motivated when footfall drops.

Retail business always has been tough – but today’s challenges for bricks-&-mortar retailers seem to reach unprecedented heights, with footfall dropping up to 20% compared to last year, even in prime locations.  (more…)

Units Per Ticket Below 1: Get Effective in Cross Channel

In times of decreasing store footfall and sales, brand retailers focus on driving L4L strategies. This article advises how to drive sales per ticket.

In the old days, higher average selling prices were a convenient strategy to grow competition. This often worked, even though the number of tickets came down. But over the last few years, many retail managers focussed on monitoring conversion rates and units per ticket when driving same store performances – now we may have to look for new ways to grow L4L sales. (more…)