Retail Unwrapped - from The Robin Report

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! One of the hottest tickets this year is the much-anticipated annual edition of Shoptalk in Las Vegas.  This year’s key topics will not disappoint, with a focus on how AI can transform your business, create unified retail experiences, harness brand power, and build loyalty via seamless customer jour...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! Here’s a provocative thought: The sum of retail is greater than its parts. Historically, retailers benchmark individual store profit for physical retail as a mainstay of performance measurement. But in a digital marketplace, brick-and-mortar profitability goes beyond the scope of the four walls. Jo...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! Returns have become a huge headache for retailers and a hassle for customers --  and the growth of online sales has exacerbated the problem. The cost of returns continues to skyrocket, impacting the bottom line, and at the same time, the negative environmental impact of returned goods is growing. ...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! The retail environment is moving at lightning speed, making C-suite succession planning more difficult. Case in point? Gap has had a revolving door of CEOs ever since trying to replace Mickey Drexler.  Leading the retail industry in a digital marketplace and finding the right talent has become an e...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! With the sheer number of retail startups at NRF, you’d think you were at the Big AI Show at the Javits Center in New York last week.  Clearly, retail tech offers the partnerships, innovations, and solutions required to operate in a digital marketplace. And AI, in its many forms, dominated the conve...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! Gen Z and the Alphas right behind them are deeply influencing brands and workplace cultures.  Diversity, equity, and inclusion are table stakes for the next gens who have a new set of values and are hyper-socially aware. Retailers and brands that don’t see the importance of today’s cultural movemen...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! The Robin Report Retail Radicals celebrate the icons and iconoclasts that are reinventing legacy retail. Each of these remarkable brands has a deep brand ethos, appeals to a multigenerational customer, and stays true to their brand strategy. They survive and thrive in disruptive marketplaces with e...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! Preemptive distribution is pushing retailers to go local with assortments, services, and indigenous products. Advances in retail technologies will enable localization with precise customer preferences and more relevant product assortments, while marketplaces and strategic partnerships will continue...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! Retail accounting provides a snapshot of real-time profit margins, but it may lead to an overstatement of profits since the practice is based on retail pricing.  With fluctuations in selling prices, is cost-based accounting really a better measure of performance for the retail industry?  Join Robin...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! What’s the story behind organized retail crime?  It has commanded national headlines and resulted in many stores being transformed into locked vaults. Join Robin and Shelley as they deconstruct the situation, discussing that the narrative about organized retail crime has been exaggerated.  The back...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! What it means to be a brand today goes beyond the single dimension of yesterday’s mono-brand definition. Now, savvy brands use past successes and morph them into an evolved, multifaceted branding experience. Join trends expert Leslie J. Ghize, EVP of DONEGER TOBE , with Robin and Shelley in a rivet...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! How is Holiday 2023 going to end up? Even when customers are facing turbulent,  unpredictable market trends and world events, they continue to spend.  It could be just “Doom Spending” to cope with stress about the economy and external global factors.  The bigger question is: Will consumer spending...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! Black Friday Creep has moved over $5 billion out of November and December into October.  Join Robin and Shelley with guest Angela Thompson, Principal of Thompson Marketing Consulting, as they look at the broader impact of Pre-Black Friday sales. Pressure on retailers to perform and comp year-over-y...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! The U.S. has one of the highest per capita consumption of plastics in the world, driven principally by packaging. Enter a Swedish inventor Åke Rosén with Biodolomer , an alternative that looks and acts like plastic, but is renewable, biodegradable, compostable, convertible to renewable energy, give...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! Prepare to have your perspective on multicultural marketing forever changed, as we unravel the vast potential and rapid evolution of diverse audiences in the retail marketplace. We're joined by none other than Imani Laners, the VP of Multicultural Partnerships at Zeta Global, who lends her exp...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! Join Robin and Shelley and guest expert Dr. Read Hayes, leading criminologist and law enforcement pro, as they go behind the scenes of retail crime. Learn from Read how he has been using AI to help organizations worldwide, including Target, Home Depot, Bloomingdales, Coles Meyer, Disney, Proctor &a...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! Here’s a conundrum: Should bad behavior be tolerated when profits are soaring? The Ye and Adidas relationship is a cautionary tale about the temptation to trade erratic behavior for crazy revenues. During a near decade-long partnership between Kanye West and Adidas, the Yeezy brand brought in Adida...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! Travel retail has been on the rise for the decade leading up to the pandemic, doubling its revenue, but like many things, the pandemic put a halt to travel and travel retailing. As the industry climbs back to where it was pre-pandemic, retailers need a new playbook.  J oin Robin, Shelley, and Roula...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! The iconic Vans brand is seeing its profits racing down fast as competition heats up in the sneaker category.  What’s going on here?  Vans innovation has stalled, and consumer demand is veering to more traditional sneakers. Join Robin and Shelley as they debate whether new VF Corp leadership can tu...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! In the second half of our conversation, we learn from Lindsey the importance of the bigger brand work and how it could significantly reduce customer acquisition costs. She urges CMOs to challenge businesses around issues that matter to customers, like sustainability and privacy. Wrapping up, we del...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! Join Robin and Shelley with AI expert Lindsey Scheftic, Founder of The CMO Sidekick, for a candid conversation about AI in Part 1 on this topic. With in-depth marketing expertise at Amazon/Ring, Red Bull and Vans, Lindsey gets real about the future of the CMO and how marketing will be transformed b...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! Traditional succession planning may be a thing of the past for retailers. The new trend is identifying the next CEO by looking outside the four walls and mining executives from different industries. And technology IQ is becoming a key skill required in the C-suite.  Join Robin and Shelley as they d...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! Spoiler alert: Costco has become dinner table conversation. It’s the hottest-selling wholesale haute couture brand in the U.S. market catering to its 120 million members, representing $227 billion in revenues.  With a location strategy that hits higher-income markets and its social media frenzy #co...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! Has the retail world gone mad? Acquisitions, partnerships, collaborations, buy-outs, and buy-ins. Some make perfect sense, and others make us say, "What were you thinking?" Just to get started: Gap and Macy's; Tapestry and Capri; Shein and SPARC. These don’t make sense. But there’s:...

We'd love to have your feedback and ideas for future episodes of Retail Unwrapped. Just text us! The data-oriented power of direct-to-consumer (DTC) models has a leading edge over traditional retail. The collection of all user data and interactions, along with their preferences, wants and needs becomes critical for increasing engagement with existing customers and acquiring new ones. While the...