Anyone who has walked down Main Street or through a shopping mall recently has seen it. Store after store shuttered. Big-name retailers gone. Even anchor-store locations decamped. These are challenging times for brick-and-mortar retailers. According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, 50 well-known store chains have filed for bankruptcy protection in 2017, among them such iconic…
Brick-and-mortar stores are on the nice list this year by gifting their customers with a truly remarkable experience: a holiday-inspired experiential in-store environment. Physical retailers need to stand out to attract shoppers during the busy rush of the holiday season. According to eMarketer Retail, 2018 holiday e-commerce sales will expand at a rate of 15.3…
The store is more relevant than ever as customers now use it as an extension of the digital journey. To accommodate, retailers are required to not only implement increasingly sophisticated digital solutions in their stores, but in many cases redesign all or part of their brick-and-mortar presence to enable these new digital capabilities. With a strong economy and, for most retailers, a realization that they must reassess their strategy, 2019 will be a healthy year for in-store investments.
Lowe's announced yesterday that it will be closing 20 stores across the country as well as an additional 31 stores in Canada. The home improvement retailer, based in Mooresville, N.C., said the “wind-down” of certain underperforming store locations was part of its ongoing strategic reassessment. Lowe’s said most of the impacted stores were located within 10 miles…
I recently attended a retail conference in New York City with a speaker list packed with executives from well-known, online D-to-C (direct-to-consumer) companies. These are the “disruptors” shaking up their industries, many building vertically integrated brands that avoid unnecessary markups and give consumers a new way to buy products that would have traditionally had a…
Target shoppers will be able to avoid long checkout lines this holiday season thanks to a new mobile checkout service. The retailer's store associates will be equipped with mobile devices that can complete shoppers’ checkout processes from anywhere in its stores. The new service, which Target is calling "Skip-the-Line," was launched this week at all company…
Euclid’s report outlines consumers’ shopping behavior and preferences around the 2018 holiday shopping season. Top retailers across the country have already indicated plans to close on Thanksgiving this year. Yet the Euclid survey found that Thanksgiving (30 percent), Black Friday (28 percent) and the day after Christmas (28 percent) are likely to be the busiest days for all respondents shopping in brick-and-mortar stores.
Moody’s Investor Services said Thursday that its outlook for the U.S. retail industry has turned positive for the first time since July 2015, with the strong economy giving 2018 a boost and acceleration expected in 2019. In the report, U.S. Retail: Going positive as investments start bearing fruit and economy boosts growth, Moody’s said retailers…
It seems that there are only two types of retailers today: those facing deep existential challenges and Amazon.com. This competitive landscape has caused many brick-and-mortar retailers to lose sight of the customer experience. A new horrible term called “Amazonization” (yes, it really has got two "z's" in it) has recently emerged. Aside from the ghastly…
Total Retail is excited to present its eighth annual ranking of the 100 fastest-growing publicly traded retailers. This year’s list, as in years past, is based on companies’ year-over-year net sales growth, comparing the 2017 fiscal year to the 2016 fiscal year. For the first time in the eight years that Total Retail has complied…
