I love LEGO, and they have paid me in great childhood memories and eight wonderful years of assisting in partner and own retail.
(more…)
So how do you adjust store operations in Post Covid Retail without losing more sales and compromising customer service?
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.
There is no way around acknowledging that the situation is grim wherever you look and listen across the brand and retail industry, in parts even online. But if we pay close attention, we can also observe new brand industry best practice emerging.
Global expansion in sales and distribution competence has become a lifesaving strategy feature, but allow me a question first:
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.
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.
Over the last couple of years, brand private equity (PE) investments have increased strongly. Brand investments were very attractive, PE investors had a positive influence, but not all PE investments have been success stories. From my experience as a CFO in that environment, I’d like to share some learnings on how brands can grow successfully with private equity. (more…)
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?
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.
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.
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…)