News English — retail

A review of the frictionless store concepts on view at #NRF2019; Ai-Fi, Cloud Pick, Cisco, Toshiba, Zippin, and Soul-M. Only one of these appeared commercially available right now - Cloud Pick, a Chinese company.

Push Possible Manhattan Associates organises an annual event in Europe for EMEA customers. This was held Oct 8-10 in Amsterdam, 2018. Delegates included some of the top European (and quite a few global) retail names. The event is heavy on supply chain and logistics but targets the eCommerce sector. Eddie Capel, CEO, Manhattan Associates kicked off the event in style. We were treated to a press briefing by the CEO, SVP Product Management and the European MD. In the evening prior to the press briefing we had the opportunity to talk to Brian Kinsella, SVP Product Management and Adam Kline,...

20/09/2018: Passed by the famous Knightsbridge Harrods store on the way back from FT Future of Retail conference and noticed this amazing scaffolding cover. This is how you as a retailer can take advantage of refurbishment to build your brand instead of disappearing behind banners and metal bars.

After a relatively long period of media speculation, Farfetch has finally filed an intention to list on NYSE (source). At the time of writing this blog there were no specifics on its pricing and the company is no doubt working the funding circuit hard to explore the level of interest and promote the pricing. While pricing is not known, there are a few other details that we know of. JD.com stepped in as an investor earlier in 2018 and have an option on about a third of the business. What is Farfetch? Farfetch is an aggregator platform for luxury fashion...

Online has led to widespread high-street store cannibalisation putting profitability at risk. CEO's need to look at organisational fundamentals to remedy the damage done to the many multi- or omni-channel (whatever you want to call it) retailers. At its most basic - retailers have not given any thought to new business when rolling out the online channel and have continued to focus on existing customers and demographics hence inviting channel cannibalisation. For example, John Lewis (excl. Waitrose) increased revenue by 5.6% CAGR 2008-18. In the same period online has grown as a share of revenue from 13% to 42% at...