On London’s Oxford Street yesterday a man was stood on a box with a loud hailer and a wearing a board proclaiming in big bold letters: “panic no more”. Through the loud hailer he was proclaiming to all the shoppers walking along the Street that “the recession was over” and that “it was safe to [...]
What a difference a year makes
New York in early January would never seem to be the most hospitable of months to visit this great City. The winds that whip through the Avenues and Streets can cut right through you. A year ago, when retailers converged on New York for the NRF convention, the mood matched the weather as the full [...]
New beginnings?
Signing off my last blog before the Christmas holiday I said that prospects for the New Year could be made or broken by the consumer and their continuing capacity to surprise. And surprise they did here in the UK with retailers reporting very strong trading which got even stronger with the start of their clearance [...]
That end of year feeling
Its that time of year when the media are full of reviews of both the year and the decade about to end - the “noughties” as it has been dubbed. What a decade of contrasts it has been, but best characterised as being about “boom” and “bust”. For much of the decade, the economy within [...]
The shape of things to come
So now we know how Christmas 2009 could finish up for the retail industry. America’s big Thanksgiving holiday which is followed by “Black Friday” and now “Cyber Monday” has taken on the role of being a global benchmark for retailers. And the official verdict, as supplied by the National Retail Federation’s analysis of members’ sales, [...]
The size of the challenge
The big news in UK retailing last week was the announcement of a new CEO for Marks and Spencer. After months of speculation, the company unveiled their choice for this crucial position to be Marc Bolland, the former Heineken COO and then saviour of UK food retailer, Morrison’s. A surprise on the one hand - [...]
Drowning in data
The retail mantra of “knowing your customer” has never been more true than it is today. And many retailers certainly appear to have plenty of tools to do just that with sales data pouring into the company’s systems every minute, hour and day. But it would seem that this is still not enough if you [...]
The mood we’re in
Around the world, retailers are getting understandably nervous. We’re now well and truly into the count-down towards the critical Christmas season for many countries. After the year we have been having, a good or bad season could literally make or break a number of retailers. The mood in recent weeks seems to have shifted from [...]
Location, location, location
You can walk down a familiar street and very often take the surroundings for granted. Walking along London’s Oxford Street this week - a pretty big street admittedly and one that sits in the top 10 rankings of most expensive retail locations in the world - and I saw it in all its shocking reality. [...]
Keep listening to your customers
A few days ago, Retail Week held a special evening here in London as part of its 21st anniversary celebrations. It brought together four true “legends” of UK retailing to answer questions from today’s generation of retail leaders. The point being, that for many board-level directors running retail businesses, the downturn of the last 18 [...]
