Retail Service

Retail Opreations 2020 feature

Retail Operations 2020: Time to Manage Outside of the Box

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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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Apple service experience

Let’s Talk About Services

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Take service experience one step beyond! This installment of our Let’s Talk About series takes a deep dive into service, the second pillar of building a future-proof brand experience.

We all know what service means, right? We all buy things, and we’re all familiar with the customer experience of being handed our purchase in a carrier bag to take home. That’s an example of a basic consumer expectation. (more…)

Rapha is not a brand, it’s brand community management at its best

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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, this story about brand community management may change that when bike apparel may well set trends in mainstream clothing by 2025.

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omni channel retail

Inspirational Business Model for Omni Channel Retail

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The need for constant innovation in retail is a call to action. I’d love to motivate retailers to execute their innovative spirit with simple acts of creativity.

One option is to develop your customers’ new favourite place, spaces where the community meets to share common passions in a relaxed atmosphere while experiencing brands and their product offerings.

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culinary treats shopping

Culinary Treats & Shopping

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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.

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Global Retail Best Practice

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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.

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Amazon on the Road to Omnichannel Retail Success?

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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?

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Duty Free Tourist Retail Dubai Airport

7 Key Success Factors for Excellence in Tourist Retail

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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

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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

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“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

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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

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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

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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

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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

Brand Analytics,

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

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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…)