Retail News Around the Horn
A few thoughts on retail: Black Friday has Moved to Thursday: As I predicted last year, stores are opening earlier for Black Friday this year. ToysRUs jumped the gun in 2010 and opened at 10PM on Thursday. Each ToysRUs store landed 1,000+ shoppers – the largest crowds of any retailer largely because there was nothing else open. I predicted then that stores would open […]
Black Friday Myths
A decent list of 15 Black Friday myths can be found here.
Store Traffic Will be One of the Biggest Hurdles this Holiday
Some are predicting store traffic will fall (again) this year.
Understanding “Mobile” Shopping
Earlier this week, the New York Times reported on a study by Forrester. The key finding: “Even though just 9 percent of shoppers own tablets, sales from tablets already account for 20 percent of mobile e-commerce sales and 60 percent of tablet owners have used them to shop.” Certainly tablets are set to have a disruptive impact […]
Toys“R”Us Picks-up Kindle
At the end of the month, Toys“R”Us will begin selling Amazon’s Kindle (see Retailing Today, Mashable, Reuters, LA Times). This is a natural extention of its existing non-Amazon retail strategy (which already includes Target, Best Buy, RadioShack and AT&T stores). More importantly, I think it targets an important segment of the population primed for an […]
How Impactful is Verizon for RadioShack and RadioShack for Verizon
By now you’ve read the news that RadioShack (RSH) will stop carrying T-Mobile devices on September 14th and start carrying Verizon devices on September 15th. If you missed it you can read more here: (Reuters, TechCrunch, Engadget). How impactful might this be for both Verizon and RadioShack? Let’s start first with RadioShack. Despite poor results, the stock […]
When eReaders grow-up to be Tablets
What happens when eReaders grow up to be tablets? This morphing is already well underway. Barnes & Noble has always referred to the Color Nook as a tablet eReader – with tablet being the operative word. At their event this week. B&N claimed the Color Nook is the top selling android tablet in the market. […]
Evolutionary Currents: Adding Context to the Nook Color Upgrade
This week Barnes & Noble upgraded the software running on their Nook Color e-reader tablets. Users can now access apps, have email pushed to the device and watch flash videos. There are a variety of reviews on the web (see: here, here, and here) discussing the anticipated update so here I’ll take a differ tack […]
Retail Trends to Watch
The following was published in Dealerscope Magazine in December 2010: The last three years have been a volatile period in the history of consumer electronics. While a recovery is slowly taking shape, I believe the next few years will offer as much change as the in the last year or so. Here are a few […]
Using Events to Drive Retail Traffic
BestBuy is apparently holding iPad supply so they will presumably have enough supply on stock and in the stores for an “upcoming event.” This highlights the delicate nature of retailing today. Physical media is no longer the traffic driver it once was, but today’s traffic drivers aren’t providing the margin that retailers need so events have become the focus to drive […]
