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Once heralded as an integral part of the store of the future, RFID tags have never gotten widespread adoption as the cost of deployment and tech hurdles have remain stubbornly high.
Starbucks is investing in new technology to make ordering and pickup faster. But, the company maintains that it's not trying to eliminate the need for human help. At a recent retail event, the coffee giant's president and CEO, Kevin Johnson, explained why.
After starting as a media company, Food52 is transforming into a commerce company -- and learning the ropes for dealing with customer service hurdles.
Pier 1 is planning on shutting down nearly half of its stores. It's a drastic measure for a floundering retail brand. How did it get here? Due to years of ignoring the competitive landscape and being unable to rebuild a modern brand.
Forever 21, which was brought down by opening too many stores that were too big, now sees e-commerce as key to its turnaround. President Alex Ok said in a press release that e-commerce accounts for 25% of Forever 21's sales, and "forms a large chunk of the profitable core of our operations and as part of our new global strategy." When Forever 21 filed for bankruptcy in September, the company said it would close as many as 178 U.S. stores. While analysts and industry observers say that Forever 21's e-commerce operations could use a refresh, they maintain that the company's biggest problems remain the size of its stores, its cluttered layout, and a failure to respond to fashion trends as quickly as competitors.
On Monday, Amazon announced a partnership with brick-and-mortar chain Future Retail, that will allow customers to order products from the company through Amazon India. With six different chains and more than 1,500 stores, Future Retail is one of the largest brick-and-mortar retailers in the country. Amazon has had a 3.58% stake in Future Retail since February, and also has stakes in Indian supermarket operator More, and fashion label Shoppers' Stop. Meanwhile, its biggest competitor Walmart completed a $16 billion acquisition of Flipkart, the biggest e-commerce player in the country, in August. It was Walmart's biggest acquisition to date.
The Trump administration has proposed a 100% tariff on all European wines. This has caused the wine industry to go into panic mode. While importers would be on the front lines of this change, a whole slew of wine-adjacent businesses stand to be adversely impacted by these new duties.
Large national retailers are all trying to grow out their own advertising businesses. Part of that is convincing brands that they have a unique platform that will lead to more sales. Modern Retail obtained Target's pitch deck, which shows how the retailers is positioning itself as a treasure trove of customer data.
When retailers seek to cut costs, salaried store employees can be the first ones to get the ax. Among those who do remain, many of them say that their job is becoming harder and the hours more unpredictable, according to five current or former salaried managers Modern Retail spoke with.
This year, a number of brick-and-mortar retailers announced that they were piloting clothing rental services. Now, the big question in 2020 is how many of them will survive. Most of these new rental services are structured as a monthly subscription, and the hope is that these services prove to be a profitable, recurring revenue stream for brick-and-mortar retailers. But that recurring revenue stream doesn't come easily.
Rite Aid posted a solid earnings report and its stock is skyrocketing. But it faces a long road ahead to turnaround its ailing business. Meanwhile, bigger competitors like Walgreens are facing similar headwinds, indicating that traditional pharmacies are in a bit of a rut.
The headlines for the last few years have insisted that grocery e-commerce is on the verge of hitting the mainstream. Right now, however, it only represents about 3% of overall sales. Is a change really on the horizon? Or are estimates over-indexing for a few of the biggest players?
More grocery stores are realizing they need to build out standalone programs to fulfill digital orders. There are a few choices on the market currently, but one trend called micro-fulfillment is increasingly catching companies' eyes.
As Bonobos founder Andy Dunn prepares to leave Walmart, it's the latest sign of trouble for the company's group of digitally native brands. When Dunn joined Walmart in 2017, he was supposed to help the company find other digitally-native brands that would be ripe for acquisition, and help Walmart to attract more high-income shoppers. Instead, the company has found other ways to target a more affluent consumer.
Hotel rooms and lobbies are becoming and increasingly attractive area for retailers to acquire new customers. Last week, Rent the Runway announced that it was partnering with Marriott-owned W Hotels. Visitors at four W Hotels will have the option to rent four pieces of clothing from Rent the Runway when they book their rooms, which will be placed in the closets of their rooms when they arrive. And department stores including Nordstrom, Macy's and Bloomingdale's are currently hosting pop-ups in time for the holidays at a handful of New York City hotels, in order to draw more business from tourists.
A growing number of health and beauty brands are turning to cloud-based systems that can handle customer, financial and inventory data across all processes, from production to payment.
During the Holiday season, Amazon abruptly announced that it wouldn't let merchants use FedEx to fulfill Prime orders. Now, the e-commerce giant has made an about face and let the parcel service back in. What's behind these moves is a complicated ecosystem of logistics competition and customer expectations.
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