Thought you might be interested to see what’s happened to rents compared to average incomes in recent years. Take a look at this link. Anybody with kids trying to get started on their own probably won’t be surprised by this. While this is for all employees, I’m pretty sure it’s especially impactful on our target […]
Rents Versus Income: How Does It Impact Your Customer? Read More »
We sell a lot of apparel. It’s where we, as an industry, make somewhere between a lot to most of our money. We’ve benefited over many years from apparel prices that have risen slowly if at all, and certainly more slowly than inflation. This article demonstrates that. It further tells us that apparel prices have started to rise and
What Happens If (When?) Apparel Prices Rise? Read More »
A recent trip to the East coast found me in a mid-sized, somewhat economically depressed city that’s undergoing quite a revival in its downtown core. I had the chance to walk the downtown with one of the people intimately involved in that development as he explained the vision and showed me the construction. Part of what
A Tale of Two Retailers Read More »
If you’re a homeowner, you know that you can never complete your project list. All you can do is try to keep it from getting longer. At our house, outside projects are my job and in the Northwest, that means get them done in the summer. In the spirit of shortening the list, I stopped by a
We’ve all been watching for a while now as online and brick and mortar retail have collided and converged. We know it’s here to stay and that there’s a lot of evolving left to do. None of us know what the end product will look like (though maybe it’s better to acknowledge that there is no end
Another Possible Retail Future Read More »
Zara has 5,900 stores in 85 countries. Only 45 are in the United States. I’ll get back to why that is. I’ve been aware of Zara for a while of course, but when my ever vigilant research department sent me this article, I decided there were some lessons we could all learn. Because I don’t want to rehash
Some Lessons From Zara; How Fast Fashion Fits Today’s Economy Read More »
Maybe ten days ago, I wrote this article that talked about JC Penney’s new pricing policy and strategy and referred you to an article on that strategy and why it might not work. I thought that article had some implications for our industry and I discussed them. Now, my ultra-sophisticated research department (thank you dear) has
Retail Evolution and Industry Conferences: What’s the Connection? Read More »
As you are probably aware JC Penney, struggling to find a sustainable market position, hired a high powered Apple executive as CEO. He got rid of all their sales and started offering everyday low prices in an attempt to regain some customer attention and loyalty. Based on their recent earnings release, it’s not working, though I hope
Learning from JC Penney: Their Transparent Pricing Debacle (So Far) Read More »
I’ve had a few ideas lately and come across some information I wanted to share. None of them seemed worthy of its own article, so I thought I’d just spew them out as they sprang into my mind. I have no idea how this is going to turn out. First, a housekeeping issue. I know that Quiksilver, Zumiez
Yesterday, I had occasion to meet up with Jaimeson Keegan, who’s the President/Floor Sweeper (according to his business card) of SUPERHEROES Management. It offers athlete and entertainment talent representation combined with social media strategies and some other stuff that I thought was a very sensible aggregation. Anyway, we’re both up here in the Northwest and just thought
Get Out of the Office! It’s Amazing What You Can Learn Read More »