Category: retail businesses
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How can a truly sustainable brand embrace the concept of growth?
As with all things sustainable the answer is often complex and multi-layered. This question is no exception. Just like many consumers I’ve sifted through all the general data and detailed product specifications to try to work out how sustainable a brand, or a individual item actually is. How much damage am I doing to the…
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Body Shop: Seeking a change in fortune for this rough-cut diamond
in branding & visual communication, brave-words, customer experience, customer service, customer-engagement, disruptive retail, ethical retailing, health & beauty, impulse retailing, in-store services, packaging, product suppliers, recycling, retail, retail brand heritage, retail businesses, retail management, retail organisations, retail strategy, store theatre, sustainability, telling product storiesWhere do you begin with the story of Body Shop. So many twists and turns, and so many lessons. Anyone who remembers the 1980s and 1990s experienced a totally new retail concept. Body Shop was way ahead of its time in the world of conscientious cosmetics and toiletries. It was primarily a producer, ensuring that…
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Swimming with the current: Gymshark’s coffee conversations
As you may already be aware I am a huge fan of Gymshark, the gym wear producer and retailer. There are so many things to learn from the rags to riches business that began in a garage 10 years ago and is now valued at over $1 billion. I’ve been following their press during their…
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Superdry Re-discovers its Private Passion
I was watching Julian Dunkerton unveil his new Superdry Athletic Essentials shop at London Westfield recently. This was a retail business leader who was upbeat and enthusiastic! For sure he was announcing Superdry’s latest figures from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) report of the year, showing that the fashion retailer is soaring above the 3%…
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Trust M&S to be ‘Positively Dissatisfied!’
in assortment structure planning, branding & visual communication, customer experience, customer service, customer-engagement, disruptive retail, fashion accessories, food & drink, home, ladies fashion, multi-category, omni-channel retailing, retail, retail brand heritage, retail businesses, retail management, retail organisations, retail strategy, store experience, store operationsI remember this story from the halcyon days of M&S. That when customers bought food from M&S and it didn’t taste amazing, they immediately thought their cooker was not working properly and called an engineer. Of course this may well be folklore. However it does illustrate the level of trust that M&S commanded, and it…
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No.02: What customer perceptions about your brand do you want your new shop to change? – ’52 Steps to the Perfect Shop!’
in analytics, branding & visual communication, customer experience, customer-engagement, location strategy, meaning in the retail madness, pop-up stores, retail, retail brand heritage, retail businesses, retail management, retail organisations, retail strategy, shop of the future, store experience, store theatrePost No.02 in the weekly newsletter series: ‘52 Steps to the Perfect Shop!’ You too can have ‘The Perfect Shop’ by this time next year! The second stage of preparing our vision for our new shop is to consider the customer, both existing and potential new ones. Certainly if you are a pureplay entering the…
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No.01: What is your vision for your new shop concept? – ’52 Steps to the Perfect Shop!’
Post No.01 in the weekly newsletter series: ‘52 Steps to the Perfect Shop!’ You too can have ‘The Perfect Shop’ by this time next year! When you create and deliver a new shop concept, your ‘Shop of the Future’ if you like, it is an incredibly complex process. It involves…it should involve many different stakeholders.…
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How and where to invest in the circular supply chain
in assortment structure planning, branding & visual communication, customer-engagement, disruptive retail, ethical retailing, fast fashion, meaning in the retail madness, new retail, pre-loved, preorder, product suppliers, pureplay, re-sell, recycling, renting, retail, retail businesses, retail management, retail organisations, retail strategy, secondhand, sustainabilityGreater than the disruptive markets we operate in, is the disrupted world that we live in. Time has long passed, from when a sustainable initiative was not much more than a smart marketing strategy. Sustainability has now irreversibly developed into something essential to establish commercial traction with many customers. Responsibility for sustainability has also shifted,…
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Moving from ‘Retail location planning’ to ‘Customer location planning’
in analytics, assortment structure planning, disruptive retail, ethical retailing, high street planning, internationalisation, location strategy, meaning in the retail madness, multi-category, new retail, omni-channel retailing, product suppliers, retail, retail businesses, retail management, retail organisations, retail strategy, store operations, sustainability, town centre planning‘Channel’ is already becoming an obsolete word. Customers and retailers are connecting via an array of ‘Shopping touchpoints.’ These ‘shopping touchpoints’ will continue to be a fusion of traditional and new shop formats and customer ‘lifestyle locations,’ across digital and physical worlds. Retailers themselves will not be the ones to decide which channels to offer…
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Time for us to create our own certainty in this world of retail uncertainty.
If there has always been one certainty in the retail industry, then it is uncertainty. We deal with customers who are unpredictable. We forward guess every season in terms of what we should stock in the hope we can sell it. We are at the mercy of the weather, the geo-politics of the world and…
Stay in touch with our…
’52 Steps to the Perfect Shop!’
weekly newsletter
For everyone looking to improve their physical shops,
or even thinking of opening their first pop-up or permanent shop,
we have written the ’52 Steps to the Perfect Shop!’ weekly newsletter, delivered direct to your inbox.
You too can have ‘The Perfect Shop’ by this time next year!