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Foot Locker has long been a staple of the mall, with an estimated 80% of its stores being located in malls as of 2018. Now, the coronavirus is accelerating those plans, CEO Dick Johnson said during the company's first quarter earnings call. The sneaker retailer has had to rethink its physical retail strategy over the past couple of years, not only to lessen its reliance on malls, but also to give its customers new reasons to visit the store.
Over the past year, Facebook hasn't been shy about its e-commerce ambitions. So, it didn't come entirely as a surprise on Tuesday when Facebook announced that it would be launching customizable online storefronts called Facebook Shops, as part of its quest to get customers to think of Facebook and Instagram as their go-to places to discover new products. Shopify is largely considered to be the go-to e-commerce provider from direct-to-consumer brands, and as such, stands to benefits the most right now from Facebook's aggressive e-commerce push.
Walmart has proven to be one of the retail winners over the last couple of months, as both its stores and its website drew strong sales. During its first quarter earnings on Tuesday, Walmart reported that total revenue was $10.7 billion, up 8.6% year-over-year. The past couple of months have shown just how far Walmart has come in building an e-commerce behemoth.
CBD beverage brand Recess just launched a redesigned website, alongside some new revenue streams. The company now has subscriptions, a line of merchandise and a new ordering system for wholesale vendors. Its national expansion plans are starting to come into sharper focus.
As stores re-open, the shoppers who are coming back are more likely to be on a mission. Many of the shoppers who are venturing out to the store are ones who are going to the store because they know what products they want to buy, but can't find it online. In order to cater to these shoppers, more retailers are rolling out tools to help them get in and out as quickly as possible.
Now that companies have roughly two months of working remotely under their belts, all CEOs are grappling with if, and when, they should call employees back to the office. Many CEOs are trying to figure out exactly what that will look like. For some, it may mean getting a smaller space. For others, scrapping offices altogether.
Branch Basics normally signs up about 900 new customers a week. In March and April, that number sometimes jumped to 1,400. But Branch Basics isn't the only subscription startup that saw a bump in new subscribers over the past month or two. This uptick in new customers for subscription services correlates with stay-at-home orders being issued across the U.S.
On Monday, PepsiCo announced the launch of two new websites through which shoppers can order products from its various portfolio of brands. The company's head of e-commerce, Gibu Thomas, spoke with ModernRetail about the company's e-commerce strategy.
As retailers prepare to reopen their stores in select states, many of them are offering curbside pick-up services for the first time in order to cater to shoppers who are hesitant about entering stores. While curbside pickup has some of the same appeal as buy online pickup in-store, it's a bit more logistically complicated to pull off.
While stores remain closed, Nike's apps have been critical to making sure that the company remains top of mind for customers. Heidi O'Neill, the brand's president of consumer and marketplace, talked with Modern Retail about the company's digital strategy and how it's approaching store reopenings.
Direct-to-consumer startups have been thinking for weeks about how and when they want to re-open their stores. But as the time has come to re-open stores in some states, no one has any better idea of what the right path forward is than they did six weeks ago.
Since launching in 2013, Derris has quickly become one of the go-to public relations agency for direct-to-consumer startups. Since then, its founders Jesse Derris and Matt Higgins have also parlayed the success of Derris into an investing arm. Derris and Higgins are the founders of a fund called Amity Supply, which launched in 2017 with an initial $10 million fund and primarily invests in startups pre-launch. Its portfolio companies include telemedicine brand Hims, and acne care brand Starface.
JCPenney already faced a tough road in re-opening its stores, as the company was struggling to grow sales even before the coronavirus. Now, it has another headache to contend with as it dukes it out with Sephora over its shops-in-shops.
As the coronavirus upends consumer behavior, it presents a double-edged sword for Shopify, which powers the e-commerce sites of more than 1 million merchants. As more shopping takes place online while stores are closed, the digitally-native companies that run on Shopify could be well positioned to capture a large portion of this spending. But first, Shopify needs to make sure that these e-commerce companies, many of whom also have stores, survive the enormous hit to their offline sales.
For many direct-to-consumer founders, it's been six weeks of extreme highs and lows -- some companies have recorded simultaneously some of their best and worst sales days within those same time periods. But even companies that have reported record sales haven't been immune from having to lay employees off. As a result, many DTC founders are finding themselves having to navigate situations that they never have been before, and are having to learn new ways of leading.
As Target and Walmart increasingly build up their e-commerce offerings, Amazon is trying to cling to its positioning in search results. As such, the e-commerce giant tweaked its algorithm to focus more on external search results. When customers type “leopard print bedding” into Google, Amazon wants to ensure that an Amazon product -- not a Walmart product -- comes up first. It's a small but important change, and signals a turning tide.
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