Category: retail
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Why we all need to challenge ourselves to simply act sustainably.
Often the complex and devastating problems caused by the fashion industry seem so huge that individuals wanting to make a change, even organisations wanting to make change, feel lost and helpless in a sea of data and jargon. The causes and the solutions can seem very big business. The irony is that it is actually…
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Have we all forgotten our responsibility to enjoy our clothes?
Behind the eye-watering figures that illustrate our voracious appetite for new clothing, the success of the fast-fashion & ultra-fast-fashion industries, and the shocking volumes of clothing that go to landfill, sometimes without even being worn, is the fact that we have forgotten, or perhaps never appreciated, the responsibilities we have when we buy an item…
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No.11: Avoid Visual Chaos in your shop. Display only 3 types of product story! – ’52 Steps to the Perfect Shop!’
in assortment structure planning, customer experience, fabrics, fashion, impulse retailing, packaging, retail, sales promotions & events, space management, space planning, store experience, store layout, store theatre, telling product stories, visual merchandising, visual merchandising operations, vm compliance, vm operations, VM Selling Toolkit, VManalyticsPost No.11 in the weekly newsletter series: ‘52 Steps to the Perfect Shop!’ You too can have ‘The Perfect Shop’ by this time next year! What do we fill our stores with? The literal answer, of course, is products. However, if you want to be a successful retail business with profitable shops then it’s important…
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Can our closet wars help us to select our sustainability battles!
I love this chart! It was produced using Globaldata research and is now more than 5 years old. It predicted what types of retailer our fashion wardrobe would be bought from, up to the year 2028. As we stand here in 2025 we can now see how accurate the predications were. Even if we consider…
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No.10: ‘The Golden Equation for Perfect Shop Space!’ – ’52 Steps to the Perfect Shop!’
in assortment structure planning, branding & visual communication, customer experience, retail, retail management, retail strategy, space management, space planning, store experience, store layout, store theatre, telling product stories, visual merchandising, visual merchandising operations, vm compliance, vm operationsPost No.10 in the weekly newsletter series: ‘52 Steps to the Perfect Shop!’ You too can have ‘The Perfect Shop’ by this time next year! It is often said when writing music that it is not the notes that make the song, it is the spaces in-between. Similarly when it comes to shop space planning,…
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No.09: ‘Every store is different, but every linear metre is the same!’ – ’52 Steps to the Perfect Shop!’
in assortment structure planning, retail, retail management, retail organisations, space management, space planning, store experience, store layout, store operations, store operations audits, store operations compliance, telling product stories, visual merchandising, visual merchandising operations, vm compliance, vm operations, VM Selling Toolkit, VManalyticsPost No.09 in the weekly newsletter series: ‘52 Steps to the Perfect Shop!’ You too can have ‘The Perfect Shop’ by this time next year! I’ve worked with many retail businesses, with many shops. We always go on a tour of their shops. Sometimes all of the shops are bad, rarely all of the shops…
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No.08: ‘Visual Merchandising: Open this box of delights with care!’ – ’52 Steps to the Perfect Shop!’
Post No.08 in the weekly newsletter series: ‘52 Steps to the Perfect Shop!’ You too can have ‘The Perfect Shop’ by this time next year! Now that we’ve started working in linear metre ‘Product Story Blocks’ we can really start to plan and control the visual look of our displays. As we are hopefully learning,…
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Why an unlikely alliance of Donald Trump & Taylor Swift could put an end to Shein!
Please excuse the dramatic title for this post. As it currently stands there is as much chance of Mr Trump & Ms Swift collaborating together, as hell freezing over. (Although that does seem more likely than it did a month ago! ) The point is that if you want to curtail the ultra-fast fashion machine,…
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Is a global fashion business without global creativity the biggest waste of human resources?
I’ve always found it very strange that many of the factories that are required to churn out mindless, repetitive fashions for global brands, are in countries which naturally have the most beautiful fabrics, designs, colours, fashion sense, and artisan skills to create extraordinary and original clothing. It is even stranger when you consider that the…
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“Shein don’t Cheat, they Compete!” – Discuss…
in assortment structure planning, ethical retailing, fabrics, fashion, fast fashion, internationalisation, ladies fashion, meaning in the retail madness, product development, product suppliers, pureplay, retail, retail businesses, retail management, retail organisations, retail strategy, social savvy, supply-chains, sustainability, value retailingAnd then suddenly from the Shein silence, the non-communication with government committees, potential shareholders and the general public, we have Peter Pernot-Day, Shein’s head of strategic and corporate affairs in North America, the UK and Europe, speaking to delegates at Retail Week’s Live 2025 conference. Firstly, thank you to Retail Week for sharing his speech…
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You too can have ‘The Perfect Shop’ by this time next year!