Retail Service

Engaging Associates: Best Practice Retail Operations at Polo Ralph Lauren

Best Practice, , , ,

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?

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Top Sporting Goods Brands Not Fit for Cross Channel Experience

Distribution Excellence, , , , ,

“Most brands are pretty bad at cross channel experience.” That was the conclusion I came to during a recent online-offline study tour in London.

Asics, Adidas, New Balance, Nike, and Puma were my main brands of interest. To assess them, I researched cross channel experience best practices of a wide range of brands and retailers, created a scorecard, and built a store assessment app. In late August, I went on a field trip to London to find out how well they performed.

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Service Robots in a Mall in Japan (Photo: Shutterstock)

Is Your Store Format Ready for International Expansion? Part II

Distribution Excellence, ,

Customer Service levels and consumer expectations differ from country to country. This post (Part II of this series) shows how those differences affect your staffing and how you select, train, motivate and pay your store staff when expanding into new markets.

In Part I I talked about the specifics to consider when taking a proven retail format international with regards to store location, adjacencies, assortment, product mix, store size, dimensions, layout and store look and feel.

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1000 Myths, 60 Locations & 5 Formats – The Facts about the Amazon Retail Strategy

Unique Retail, , , , , , ,

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

Unique Retail, , , , , ,

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…)

Clothes line (photo: Zeitgeist Handeln) - The Necessary Fashion Retail Revolution

Have We Forgotten the Customer? The Necessary Fashion Retail Revolution

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Units per Ticket at brand footwear stores are specialy challenged

Units Per Ticket Below 1: Get Effective in Cross Channel

KPIs & Benchmarks, , , ,

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…)

Bow Power: Retail Customer Service KPI of the Year

KPIs & Benchmarks,

Retail customer service is measurable, most notably in Japan’s retail sector. The country has been known for its service culture for many years.

Its retail sales staff stand out when compared to their counterparts in other countries. Yes, department stores are dying off in Japan too and retailers are cutting costs, but retail service continues to be superior. As retailer managers we still look to Japan with great respect for their service culture. How can they afford to hire so many retail service personnel? (more…)

6 Ways to Engage Consumers to Drive Store KPIs

KPIs & Benchmarks, ,

Store KPIs are going public in Times Square, New York. We share 6 creative ways to engage consumers in your store KPIs. Ideas on next generation reporting.

There are many ways  to report inventory turns and as New York is an expensive retail place, retailers there have to be more creative about how they do this. Nygård’s Times Square store for example, communicates stock turns on a live ticker (similar to those at the NY Stock Exchange) in their store window. “We sell a pair of leggings every 45 seconds!” tells consumers that stock turns fast and you had better hurry up if you want to participate. (more…)

Duty Free Tourist Retail Dubai Airport

7 Key Success Factors for Excellence in Tourist Retail

Exploring Markets, ,

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…)