Retail Unwrapped - from The Robin Report

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! Six Major Challenges Facing Retailers to Survive Holiday You think Covid was bad? Welcome to Delta. The pandemic continues to plague retailers and brands as the Delta variant plays havoc with the most profitable time of the year for most retailers… holiday. Join Robin Lewis and Shelley E. Kohan, TR...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! Privacy and personalization are two sides of a double-edged sword. Retailers are going to be hard-pressed to personalize their marketing offerings with new privacy protocols. Google says no more cookies and Apple has opt-out options on its new operating system. Solution? Retailers are sitting on a...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! It’s no longer women’s lingerie on four and shoes on two. Stores are diversifying into platforms, partnerships and services that meet customers’ evolving demands. And shared analytics and AI tools across retailers and brands are helping to create a synergistic and holistic view of the customer... a...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! It’s anybody’s guess how this will play out through the holiday season, the disruptions just keep coming in waves. Producer and import price indices are rising—but consumer price inflation (CPI) is tending to outpace them. Strong demand and constrained supply mean more out-of-stocks, and U.S. shopp...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! You’ve got a world-class brand. Everyone loves you -- championed by iconic athletes. What’s your next act? If you’re Nike, innovation never rests. Nike serves its customers holistically, and it just keeps getting stronger. Listen in as Robin Lewis and Shelley E. Kohan, TRR’s chief strategist reveal...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! Service in retail has been on a downward spiral well before the pandemic. Covid-19 capped off a shortage in workers with retail leading all industries in the Great Resignation. Fewer workers put more stress on those left behind and demanding consumers are stressing out sales associates that are alr...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! It takes being a professional virus hunter to know what to do at this juncture in our global pandemic. Who makes the right call? The CDC? FDA? WHO? Your boss? Retail is approaching near chaos in decoding how to manage the policies and protocols that change daily with no clear direction from federal...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! Tech innovations reveal insights about your customers that you may not see in plain sight. In-person analytics should be as common for each retailer as online analytics are for their websites. How do retailers measure and leverage the shifts in consumer behavior as cities and businesses reopen? Joi...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! Is it financial constraint or by choice that consumers are running toward rental and reuse? And what’s up with borrowing new stuff that’s almost free? This could be good news for consumers who want to repurpose their clothes and trade them in for something new. It’s also a relief from prices that a...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! Want some straight talk on leadership and retail culture? Mike Gould, former CEO of Bloomingdale’s, speaks out on the issues derailing retail. The promise of customer satisfaction has been displaced by a bottom-line mentality. Mike joins Robin Lewis, and Shelley E. Kohan, TRR’s chief strategist, to...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! You know the drill: Designed in America, made and/or assembled somewhere else. U.S. consumers are so price sensitive even patriotic Made in America movements have historically failed. The renaissance of Made in America could become a reality if technology can help keep the prices down. Listen in to...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! Everyone is talking about Agile Stores, but is it all hype? What’s the benefit of agility and how can you implement agile strategies to ensure high-performance? Data can be a powerful tool or irrelevant if it’s not translated into action and connected to results. Join Phil Thorne, Managing Director...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! Digital marketplaces, even with competing sellers on the same platform, are the future of retail. Word of caution: An overabundance of brands offered through one platform is devaluing the customer experience, plus the near-infinite level of choice stacked up in endless online aisles with too much o...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! The future of retail requires an ecosystem overhaul. Today, CEOs are faced by the rigorous challenge of retaining customers who are elastic – meaning fluid in their ever-changing expectations and behaviors. Join Robin Lewis and Shelley E. Kohan, TRR’s chief strategist, with guest Dan Binder, Partne...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! D2C is the new darling of retail consultants. But it’s tricky and risky for traditional retailers with multiple vendors to play in this popular sandbox. It takes time, resources, and money to build out a sustainable D2C model. Key point: D2C is no panacea for struggling retailers. Listen in to Robi...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! All dressed up and nowhere to go? That sentiment will become a dim memory of the past pandemic. When it’s safe people want to #1 see family and friends, #2 go on vacation #3 go out to dinners/bars. These are great indicators for the apparel segment. Join Robin Lewis, Shelley E. Kohan, TRR’s chief s...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! Your social network is expanding to personal shopping: social commerce will exceed $62B by 2024. The biggest players are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and Snapchat, but don’t count out brands developing their own platforms – just look at what Nike and Sephora are doing. And retailers, you...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! Customers don’t want a flat journey that shows the same products in the same order to everyone.  They want an inspirational, personalized experience that is completely relevant to them. How do retailers deliver a valuable, emotional online experience?  Listen in as Robin Lewis and Shelley E. Kohan,...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! Is Walmart Amazon’s headache? Or the opposite? Time is our currency in a digital marketplace, and the race is on for Amazon to become dominant in the physical space or Walmart to dominate the online space. If you play by the numbers, Amazon's total revenue is projected to hit $660 billion by 2...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! It’s almost opening night for America, a tangible signal that happy days are here again with economic growth for nonessential retail finally in sight. But if New York City is the standard-bearer for post-pandemic optimism, we might be jumping the gun. Listen in as Robin Lewis and Shelley E. Kohan,...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! It only took 10 years to rewrite retail history. In the past decade, retailing has been in full-scale deconstruction propelled by technology, consumer behaviors and the new rules of a digital marketplace. What will the next decade reveal? Retail engineers will run the business in tandem with chief...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! Doug McMillon says that Walmart is pivoting to becoming a shared services platform for customers. Is this the end of the store as we know it? It's a new mindset for a new decade. We are living in a time of radical transformation: Services at Costco represent 20 percent of sales, clocking in at...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! Welcome to the Roaring Twenties. Pent-up demand for self-reward, stimulus checks, pumped-up savings and rock-bottom interest rates will feed a spending frenzy. Are pricing power and inflation lurking? Not a chance! What we really need to pay attention to is the evolving devaluation of retail as we...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! Is Amazon following a rational, actionable physical store strategy? Or is it practicing a hit or miss scattershot approach to expanding its physical presence to a predicted 3600 store count? Listen to Robin Lewis and Shelley E. Kohan, chief strategist for TRR, as they debate Amazon's future. I...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! Collaborative partnerships, including concession models, dropshipping and other types of vendor-owned inventory models are replacing antiquated wholesale-to-retail, creating shared digital and physical distribution platforms. Through collaborative partnerships, manufacturers from Nike to Prada move...